MILANO

Last weekend my friend from Texas, Jared, and I met up and traveled to Milan, Italy. Why Milan? Good question. Jared has been studying abroad here for a semester so he's been traveling a lot like me, but he's been everywhere I haven't been, and vice versa. So the only way we could figure out a destination was to do blind booking. An airline here, German Wings, has a service where they group certain packages of cities depending on what you want to do (Party? Eastern Europe? Christmas Markets? etc.). You just choose a package, and they choose the city within that package. For an extra fee, you can cross out certain cities. Well, we crossed out a couple of ones that we had already been to, but left Milan in the mix figuring we wouldn't get it. Jared especially didn't want to go to Milan since he had already been to Rome, Florence, and Italy. Well, we got Milan.... ah well. Armed with a little bit of Italian (before I left... my mom was kind enough to remind me that "Ciao!" means bye in Italian hahah..... thanks mom), we accepted our fate and went to Milan.

Well first, I didn't take into account the extreme cost it would be just to GET to Milan, and get back. We had to take a train to Cologne (1 1/2 hours away), another train to the Cologne/Bonn airport, fly to Milan, then once at the the Milan airport, had to pay a ton for a shuttle train to take us 45 minutes into the actual city... and all of this vice versa on the way back. Yikes. Let's just say as awesome as blind booking is, I wouldn't recommend it unless you are very close to a German Wings airport, and also unless you are staying at your destination for awhile. We were in Milan for less than 48 hours.

Ok, so enough of my rant. Now to the good stuff.

Milan was beautiful. I was told by Jared to just wait until I get to Rome or Venice, but I am quite content with what I saw in Milan (even though I do plan on visiting those other cities at some point). I was most impressed with the Duomo, the 3rd largest church in the world. We climbed all the way to the roof and got to see Milan's city center down below, as well as go inside during Mass. I have never seen a building that is so incredibly detailed and decorated in every single square inch, inside and out, quite like the Duomo was. I couldn't stop looking above, beside, and below me. I cannot even imagine what it took to create something so intricate.

Right next to the Duomo, in the city center, was the Galleria. It looked like it used to be an old shopping arcade, and they just revamped it with modern stores. It was pretty cool. Jared pointed out how it was funny to see what stores they had placed in the middle of the Galleria in the 4 corners: Prada, Louis Vuitton, a Diamond store, and...... McDonalds. Oh, America, look what you have done.

FOooood. Being an avid noodle eater (hey, I can't help it, I was making my own mac & cheese since I was 4!), I was reallllllly excited to try some Italian pasta... and of course, pizza and gelato. Gelato.... amazing, almost addicting. Pizza.... amazing, and huge. Pasta... not as amazing..... but I probably just have really high expectations. That's okay, I'll be back. I did notice, however, how incredibly loud Italians are while eating in a restaurant. But it just seemed like they like to have a good time with their friends, and apparently dinner is a huge, long event to most Italians. It's not uncommon to have like 3 courses, along with 3 different drinks or so and then dessert. I definitely noticed this. Another cool thing about Milan is their happy hour buffets. Nightly, almost every bar has a happy hour buffet where if you buy only one drink, you get an entire dinner buffet... fo free! We definitely hit that up. Not quite sure what I was eating.... but it was good. We also noticed an American sitting alone in front of us (I bet Jared he was American just by his mannerisms... and I was right!) so we invited him to sit with us. He ended up being really cool, quite a bit older than us, but fun nonetheless. We all ended up staying at the bar all night just talking.

We couldn't leave Milan without seeing the fashion. Even if neither of us really cared about it, we felt it would find of be an injustice to the city to not at least check it out. So we walked down Mont Napoleone, which is like the Rodeo Drive of Milan. We spotted a Ferrari within the first 3 minutes I think. We also saw the Versace store, of which Donatella Versace lives right upstairs.

We also ventured to Castello Sforzesco, the castle in Milan that houses a bunch of different museums. We stayed there for quite awhile looking at the Museum of Ancient Art (where Michelangelo's last and unfinished work is), along with an Egyptian Museum (there was an actual mummified body on display... crazy), and the Museum of Musical Instruments.

All in all, Milan was a cool city to visit to get a taste of Italy, but I hope I'm able to make it back sometime soon to visit Rome, supposedly one of the world's most beautiful ancient cities. We'll see.