Overall this day was so much better than yesterday.  We had a good plan, a strategy that worked well for us.  We went immediately to get some Illy coffee and  then to the USA pavilion.  Being a sucker for Obama on a big video screen talking about feeding 9 billion people helped.  And the huge vertical gardens are amazing.  Also talking to some of the college people who have been working there from the states.  The display wasn’t much, but I enjoyed it.

 From there we went to Japan, one of the most highly touted and with good reason.  They obviously invested substantially in their very optimistic  show, which I heard was designed by the same person who did the Sapporo winter Olympics Opening ceremony.   There were many areas and 3 major presentations.  The overall production made us really want to eat Japanese food which we did– tempura and soba oodles–delish. Sometimes I was too enthralled to photo, but here are a couple pictures.                                                                                                                                                    

marigolds peppers and tomatoes

The ceiling is all decorated with wine glasses!

From there we went all the way to the end of the Expo where the Slow Food exhibit was. We loved the huge raised bed gardens.  After that we headed over to the Italian pavilion.  First stop was the Italian wine building, shaped like a grape, of course, but it’s serious inside:

They have 1,300 wines available for tasting.  It’s an impressive sight.  For 10 euros you get three tastes, a nice little prosciutto taste and a wine glass.  We decided to taste 3 Barolos and it was very interesting.  There are several sommeliers walking around and we were helped by a young woman from Naples.  After that we went to the actual Italy pavilion.  The outside is very cool:

And inside there are some nice displays.  In one small room there is something like a huge slide show of famous architecture in Italy.  Sometimes people were shouting out the answers to where the structure was.  In the middle of the presentation our host guy giving the talk started texting.  I thought it was hilarious.

He’s supposed to be interacting, explaining but he’s texting!!!  Later on we discovered that Renzi, the Prime Minister of Italy, was coming for a meeting?? or something.  We joined a crowd waiting for him and we saw somebody famous waving to the crowd, but I’m not really sure who it was???

We went to a resting area after all the hoopla and I saw this sweet couple .

Can you see her hands?

From there we headed to Kazakstan which put on quite a show, including a beautiful demonstration of sand painting.  And a show in an actual moving theater which tilted and rolled in concert with the 3D film.   We finished the day by watching a movie at Pavilion Zero, sponsored by the UN.

We both loved riding the Metro here in Milan–people watching at its finest!

For dinner we went to a nice local place, just around the corner, Ristorante La Versilia.  The mixed seafood appetizer with the house sparkling white was really nice but the rest nothing special.  We got home just as I realized we had to have a bunch of euros to pay for the apartment tomorrow so we went for a nice walk in search of an open bancomat.  Found one with the help of the locals.

Had a nice call from Kathryn.  Hurray!  She got a job! Brava Katerina!

I’m having a lot of trouble with the blogging program, so if the pictures are not in quite the right spot please excuse me.