We left Friday morning on an early flight with only two plans: 1) our hotel- we found a deal online so we booked it without really knowing where it was in reference to the airport or the city. 2) to leave Milan on a 6:25 flight Sunday morning. For anyone who knows me, you should know that this type of trip is absolutely NOT me. I plan EVERYTHING. So I was a little nervous, but excited to finally be in a different country. When we landed, we bought bus tickets into the city and hopped on. When we got into the center of Milan, our first decision was to finally try some authentic Italian pizza (true priorities!) We sat down at a restaurant and enjoyed some deeeeelicious pizza. We were unpleasantly surprised when we got the bill to see that we had paid 5 euro a piece for CocaCola and a surprise 12 euro "service fee". We were a little irritated when our waiter asked us to tip him even after he made a service fee, but we were kind of clueless as to what we were supposed to do so we tipped him anyway. Downfalls of being a tourist, I guess.
Afterward we made it our mission to find our hotel and check in. That was much easier said than done. We wanted to use google maps but wifi is virtually nonexistent in Milan. We tried two different McDonald's and still couldn't pick up a signal. We couldn't justify paying to use an internet cafe (clearly the Italians are still stuck in the 90s with that one) so we went to a little tourist stand to buy a map and ended up getting help from a very kind Italian who spoke great English. It turns out our hotel was quite a hike from the middle of the city (no wonder it was so cheap!) so we had to buy a Milanopass, which gave us unlimited use of the subways and buses for the weekend. I should probably point out that using a subway and a public bus system for the first time in your life in a foreign country is NOT the easiest way to learn. So eventually, after much walking, trying to understand Italian, and reading our map we FINALLY made it to the hotel.
So I guess it would be fair to say that day one was not all we had hoped. We felt a little discouraged about the whole situation so instead of going all the way back into the city, we decided to have "dinner" by going to a local grocery store, buying whatever sounded good, and sitting at a park bench to eat. It actually ended up being kind of fun (and cheaper than the 5 dollar Cokes at the first restaurant). And let's be honest, you just can't go wrong with Cheese and Crackers for dinner.
Saturday we got up early for a full day of exploring. We ate a delicious breakfast at the hotel and then headed out to catch the bus. Lucky for us, there was a giant flea market on our way and we ended up walking through about a million tents of everything you can imagine for incredibly low prices. And let me tell you, this flea market was like a grown woman's Chuck E Cheese. Purses, shoes, sunglasses. The good stuff. I ended up with some scarves and sunglasses and a giant grin on my face. Day two had already become a success and that was only about 8:30am.
Thanks to Ashley (and Ann) navigating, we quickly became experts at using the metro and used it to travel all around Milan, looking at castles, churches, and cathedrals. I still cannot get over how beautiful everything in Europe really is. It was like every time we walked into a new place my jaw just hit the floor. My favorite was the Cathedral--it was gigantic; tall ceilings, amazing stained glass windows....Breathtaking. I tried to take pictures of the inside but they just didn't do it justice. The ones of the outside were okay though =]
After a long afternoon of sightseeing, we decided to grab some lunch (pizza again) and do some shopping. We couldn't afford a vast majority of the stores we went into, but it was nice to see what all the "fashion capital" fuss was about. We got a few things at the poor people stores and headed back to the hotel.
When we got hungry at night, we decided to have one last Italian pizza (you could say that we were a little obsessed). But, as it turns out, Italians don't quite have the same schedule as Spaniards, so when we went out at 9:30 for dinner there weren't a whole lot of places open. We hopped on the bus and stopped at the first sign that said Pizzeria. It turned out to be a Chinese restaurant that had pizza on the menu, too. I'm not sure if I can call it 'authentic' Italian pizzza that we ate, but whatever it was it was pretty darn good. Not to mention Brittani and Ashley got a chance to practice their Chinese with the waitress. Brittani said she was a little rusty, so while trying to order she was switching from Chinese to Spanish to English...which was just plain funny because the waitress only spoke Chinese and Italian. So even though our order of WonTons got lost in translation, it ended up being a pretty fun dinner.
After a short and sweet weekend, I have concluded these things about Milan:
The people aren't as fashion-forward as everyone claims them to be.
When you don't speak Italian, everything is an adventure.
When the advertisement for the hotel says it's only 15 minutes away from the airport, you should check and make sure it's the airport that you're flying into.
Sometimes not having a plan is the best plan of all.
And most importantly:
Milan is dangerous on the pocketbook. And on the waistline.
Here are my pictures:
Heading to Scotland on Wednesday to keep this whole traveling thing going.
Life is good =]
-Nat
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