Ciao Bella!

For the past few years I've been lucky enough to travel to a large European city to visit all the stations on their metro.  It started with Amsterdam, then there was Stockholm, and last year it was Helsinki.  

This year, I planned on it being Hamburg.  I started reading about it, bought a book, and then I thought: isn't Hamburg a variation on Amsterdam/Stockholm/Helsinki?  Another large Northern European port?  Aren't you repeating yourself?

I cast my net across the continent a little wider.  For monetary reasons, it had to be somewhere not too far - my dreams of visiting Baku's Metro were sadly put to one side.  It had to be big enough to get my interest - out went Thessaloniki - but small enough to collect in a week - that ruled out Barcelona.  I'd really rather not get killed while visiting it too, so sadly that was the end of Kyiv or Moscow.  It'd also help if it wasn't in the middle of a major extension, too, so I wouldn't feel like I'd missed out on something, so Lisbon will have to wait for another year.

I finally came to a decision.  I was going to... Milan.

First opened in 1964, the Milan Metro has 125 stations spread over five lines, the newest of which opened only last year.  Actually the official map above is a little busy because it includes the S lines, suburban rail routes that pass through the city in a tunnel.  Wikipedia has a much clearer version with only the metro stations on it.

That's manageable, I thought.  I broke out the Excel spreadsheet and worked it out.  It was more than manageable.  It looked like fun.

So there was the task: one week, five lines, travel around the network and hopefully don't get burnt to a crisp by the roasting Italian sun.  It was exhausting, sweaty work, but I'm happy to tell you I did it.  In fact I'll tell you exactly how in a series of long and tedious blog posts over the next few weeks.  Sorry about that.