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Writer's pictureEmily Halling

Milan, Italy

Friday 15th February

We enjoyed our breakfast on our little balcony before packing up and catching the bus to Milan!


The Flixbus service is great! Honestly it's such a great way to travel, they have free wifi, it's cheap, spacious, has plenty of leg room, curtains, and a toilet downstairs.


We arrived into Milan and managed to navigate the public transport, catching trains and buses to get to our accommodation. They have really weird train stations, like multiple stories of just open space, it felt like an abandoned building. The other strange thing was that they obviously try and discourage people travelling with luggage on the public transport because we had to buy a ticket for each of our big bags as well as for us!



Milan accommodation is really expensive so we decided to get something 40mins out of the city, and paid the same price for an amazing 4 star hotel as we would have a crappy B&B or hostel closer to city.


The hotel was amazing and included full buffet breakfast, private bathroom, super nice room, and a free shuttle bus, as well as the world's biggest bed!



After we had settled in, we went back into Milan to explore and get some dinner. When we came out of the train station, it opened out into the main square and we were blown away. We both expected super flashy modern all glass high rise buildings, but what we were met with were massive and grand old buildings.


The neoclassical architecture was stunning and all impressively clean and well kept. We were completely blown away by it. There was also the biggest cathedral I have ever seen, Duomo di Milano, and the other three buildings framing the square were beautiful.



What we were unprepared for, coming from quiet Verona, was the number of people! There were soooo many people packed into the square! We wandered through the very fancy and extremely beautiful shopping mall, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, and again the architecture is just a work of art.



From there we continued our main mission of finding dinner. We found "Pasta a Gogo", this cute little hole in the wall pasta place that honestly had the best pasta we'd ever had, and of course on the cheap. I went for the classic carbonara and Sam had a spicy tomatoey one and mmmm delicious and oh so cute.



 

Saturday 16th February

We woke up in our amazing hotel and enjoyed the buffet breakfast (and maybe smuggled out some morning tea), before heading out to explore for the day.


We took ourselves on another "Emily and Sam Self Walking Tour Thanks to Google Trips". We started off where we were last night at the Duomo di Milano. We were going to go inside, but the queue for tickets the tickets was down the street, let alone the queue to actually get into the Duomo, so we decided to come back later.



While we were in the main centre and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II for shopping we thought, you can't go to Milan without going into an expensive shop, so we went into a massive Tiffany's (the door man seemed to debate whether to let us in or not though haha).


The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is so architecturally beautiful, and I can't believe this magnificent building is just a shopping centre.



Just on the other side of the shopping mall is the Opera house, Teatro alla Scala which we walked past on the way to Pinacoteca di Brera, the main public art gallery in Milan. We just loved the architecture of the building.



As we were exploring we found a street that was full of little art studios open for exhibition. There was some really amazing work. It was so cool to just stumble across. There was this one in particular, where the artist had painted some amazing animals, that were just spectacular.


We started wandering through some back streets and found a tiny hole in the wall calzone place and got the biggest and most delicious calzone for 2.50 euro each (a bargain I know) and ate them while wandering through the Sempione Park.



The park is huge, and gorgeous! Just to give you an idea of the size, we sat and watched the dogs in the dog park section for a bit, before walking through a fun fair that was set up in part of it, we then passed some cafes, running tracks, and a stadium. Keeping in mind, you could only ever see one of those things in the park at a time. We strolled our way through the park and a good while later popped out at the Arco della Pace a triumphal arch built on request by Napoleon.



The view was slightly obscured though as they were setting up a run way right in front of it for Milan fashion week that starts in a couple of days.



The next stop on our tour was Sforzesco Castle, originally built in the 15th century. It definitely felt like a fortress with its' massive brick walls, seemingly made all the larger by the fact that they were built out of ordinary sized bricks. Within the walls were spacious courtyards and art galleries within the building itself. We enjoyed strolling around the courtyards soaking in the history, architecture and sun.



From here we visited an archaeological museum and church, San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore. The church was absolutely stunning. Not only was the architecture beautiful, but the real beauty was the interior which was completely covered in Fresco paintings depicting the biblical story.



The Santa Maria delle Grazie church was our next stop. It is home to Leonardo da Vinci's mural "The Last Supper". We were able to go into the church which was beautiful, but the mural is in another part of the church which unfortunately had sold out of tickets to be able to go in and see it. Not to worry though, one of the fresco's in the previous church depicted the last supper and that was pretty spectacular in itself.



We made our way back to the main square to see if the line had died down for the Duomo, but there was still an hour wait to get in, and it closed in 50mins! So we had one last look around the main square taking it all in, before heading back to Pasta a GoGo for dinner again!



Dinner was delish once again. We ate half there before boxing the rest up to take with us as we had booked a seat on the hotel shuttle bus that we needed to get to. Talk about timing, a few trains later and we were running out of the station to the shuttle bus, making it in with 30seconds to spare! We enjoyed the rest of our meal back at the hotel before falling asleep in the worlds biggest bed for the last night.


Overall we both enjoyed Milan, although it was much much busier that the other two cities we'd been to this week. The architecture is very striking and impressive, although Verona and Venice definitely are still our favourites out of this little Italian experience.


 

Sunday 17th February

We thoroughly enjoyed and made the most of the buffet breakfast one last morning, and managed to smuggle out some sandwiches we made for lunch, as well as cake for afternoon tea on the bus.


Soon enough it was time to leave, we had timed it perfectly to catch the bus to the train station, to get to the bus that would take us to Pfäffikon. Alas the bus we were meant to catch had arrived 5mins early (and we know because we saw it pulling away as we turned onto the street), not to worry, we caught the next bus, but now we were cutting it fine, because it came 20mins later because you know, it's a Sunday.


Anyway, we make it all fine, run through the train station, jump on the train, run out of the train station and to the bus with 2 mins to spare and the only two seats left together on the bus.


Woo what a rush, Pfäffikon here we come!


We spent the bus ride out of Italy playing Mario Party as Mario and Luigi, because when in Italy, it's gotta be done!

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1 comentário


ejford1027
09 de abr. de 2019

Just brilliant guys. Well done 😘

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