At 8am we departed Firenze on Frecciarossa 9504, arriving Milano at 09:42. We had booked the Walks of Italy "Best of Milan Tour with Last Supper Tickets & Milan Duomo Rooftop" tour, which met at the Piazza Santa Maria delle Grazie at 12:15 for a start time of 12:30.

Plenty of time, right?

Yeah, no. The metro was completely screwed up, with the trains just sitting in the station. Tick, tick, tick. The one on our platform finally departed but we decided not to get on it because it was a sardine can by that point, we had luggage, and gods help us if it stopped in the middle of a tunnel. So we hoped that the trains were running normally again, and that we would be able to hop the next less crowded one.

We waited. And waited. And no "next train" came for ten minutes, twenty minutes. Tick, tick, tick.

I turned to one of the others and said "what do you think?" He replied "I don't think we'll make it." "Screw that", I thought and started to plan how long it would take to get to the hotel on foot. With bags it wouldn't be a pleasant journey, but it would be a doable one. Just then another train rocked into the station. We made it to the hotel where only one of our rooms was ready (as it turned out, neither room was of the type that we booked, but that's another story), grabbed a cab to the Piazza Santa Maria delle Grazie, and made it with about five minutes to spare; enough time to grab something like to eat from the sandwich shop across the road. (A shop that I could have sworn that I took some photos of, but do not appear to have.)