Today was a washout. It rained all night and all day. Outside adventures at the Lake looked dismal. I searched the radar for anywhere dry and came up empty. So we headed to Arona, parked blocks away from the train station, and walked through the flood to buy a round trip ticket to Milan. We figured there would be plenty of indoor sights to keep us occupied.

One hour later, we arrived at Milan Centrale station. It was a circus of people. There were people stacked upon people in every direction. It you stopped, you were pushed aside or ran over. Every few minutes, you were warned of pickpockets via loudspeaker.

In this environment, we walked down to the metro station and got in a long line to buy a metro pass. Several machines sat empty as they weren’t working. The ones that were working were acting up and were not particularly easy to use. After two failed attempts to buy a metro pass, we finally found a line at a machine that worked. I was exhausted and we hadn’t even left the station.

It took me several tries to enter the metro station, even though I had a valid ticket. It turned out that you don’t put a day pass in the slot labeled ticket. Why should a ticket go in a ticket slot? Instead, it you needed to tap it on the tap screen labeled credit card. Hmmm….live and learn.

Just a few stops away, we exited the metro in the pouring rain and found ourselves standing in front of the iconic duomo. The church really is stunning, but we were coming back to tour it in a few weeks so there was no need to get soaked to the bone on this day.

Instead, we headed (along with a few thousand other people trying to get out of the rain) under the glass cover of the Vittorio Emmanuel mall. This luxury shopping area is covered by ornate glass canopies. Prada, Gucci, and other designers keep signature stores here. Instead of shoppers, many people were huddled to stay out of the rain. Teenage girls were pursing lips and twisting hips to take the perfect selfie in brand name paradise. We dodged the makeshift catwalks and headed to find the Leonardo 6 museum. Despite google maps, we soon found ourselves back on the street in the rain somewhere near the Teatro Scala. I knew that wasn’t right so we backtracked to a small elevator with a tiny sign telling us to go up a few floors to the museum entrance.

Leonardo 6 is a museum dedicated to the inventions of Leonardo d’Vinci. It is a relatively small museum that has all of his sketches computerized. You can explore electronic and physical 3-d models. We were intrigued.

It was fascinating to see how many ideas Leonardo had that were well ahead of his time. They were futuristic, viable, and beautiful. There were flying machines, weapons of war, musical instruments, machines to help industry, and general flights of fancy.

Some rooms had interactive technology to let you listen to instruments he invented, to ride in a video simulation past his inventions and to explore his masterpiece paintings. As a culmination, we entered a recreated room with a historically accurate replica of the last supper fresco. One end of the gallery had the faithful recreation (they used specialized technology and every known restoration record) of the painting to recreate the original colors. The other wall had an interactive technological display where you could compare the current state of the fresco with the recreation. The museum was actually fascinating (if a little crowded with small children that parents were letting run amok and pound on computer equipment they were too young to operate) and more importantly…we stayed dry for a few hours.

It was early afternoon, and we made a dash back to the metro to Sforza Castle where we hoped to find some lunch. The streets were flooded with inches of standing water. Crossing the street was a wading challenge. We would walk a block down the street to cross on batches of higher ground and then walk back up the street to resume our route. All the while, we retreated from the side walk when cars drove by sending a flume of water into the air and onto unobservant pedestrians.

Eventually, we found a restaurant. The menus were QR codes in Italian. So we couldn’t use google translate to read the menu. Luckily a waitress gave us choices in English plain enough that we could order. I had a nice pumpkin soup to take the chill off my rapidly numbing fingertips. My husband was fascinated by a man that walked in off the street (in a nice suit) who chatted with the waiters and ate the bread off the table of the diners who had just left the restaurant. Once the bread was gone, he said his goodbyes and disappeared back into the rain. Meanwhile, I asked for coffee. I forgot that when you don’t specify you get a thimble of very, very dark espresso. It was a jolt.

After lunch, the rain had died down a little so we walked around the Sforza castle. Tourists were huddled in each port doorway like drowned rats. I stopped to take a few photos and read how the duchess Sforza had to build a tower to keep her brother in law from killing her and her son after her husband died unexpectedly. Nothing like medieval family drama, and the castle is dramatic.

By now the rain was once again picking up. My husband’s umbrella sprang a leak and I had soaked through my top coat. It seemed like a good time to say arrivederci.

The train station was crowded, as always, and our train tickets didn’t work at the turnstiles. We were sent to a manager who waived us through with barely a look. Our train wasn’t on the departures board so I headed to find a Tren nord employee, because our ticket didn’t have the train number or final destination. We only knew we needed to stop in Arona. Just as I located an employee our train popped up on the board. At least we were reasonably sure it was our train.

We headed to the train to sit and dry out. I stopped to validate our ticket, but unlike the stamping machine on our inbound trip; the machines had QR codes. Our tickets blinked invalid…of course. But we knew we paid and no one had checked tickets the last two times we took the train so my husband told me to board and not worry about it. He was getting impatient with my travel anxiety (which I sometimes get when things aren’t working as they should). I got off the train one more time to try to validate at a nearby kiosk, but no luck.

The train left the station on time and none else had stopped to validate. (Yes, I was obsessing a bit about not validating the ticket. On a prior trip, I had watched a friend get a hefty ticket when she forgot to time stamp her return trip. So I wanted to make sure it didn’t happen to us.) We had just settled in for the return trip when a conductor stopped and asked for our tickets. I held my breath, waiting to get a fine. We handed over our tickets. He glanced at them briefly smiled and said have a good evening. I relaxed and settled in for the comfortable ride to Arona. Even rainy days can be wonderful….if you are adventurous.