A whirlwind weekend in Milan

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Date Friday 8th 2010
City La Spezia to Milan
Currency Euro 1 = NZ$0.53
Climate Low 15c - High 21c - mostly cloudy

We left the “Corner House” today - a great place to stay while we explored the Ligurian province of Italy. Breakfast was leftover risotto mixed with egg to make a kind of rice omelette - quite good really - with an egg on the side and a cup of coffee to wash it down.
Our train was at 10.40am so we walked to the station - just a few blocks from the apartment and we were on board taking our pre-selected window seats just before 10.30am. We were lucky to have the neighbouring seats occupied for only about half of the journey. The rest of time we were able to spread out and read our books and relax.
The trip into Milano Centrale took about 4 hours. We had a short delay in the middle of a tunnel about two hours into the trip. On arrival the plan was to take the Linate airport bus out to the airport where we knew the Crowne Plaza operated a free hotel shuttle to their hotel a short distance from the airport. This worked well and we were checking in at the hotel around 5pm. We put our bags in the room and wandered off to find a supermarket and a restaurant for dinner. After partaking in our favourite pastime at the supermarket we found a great little Lebanese restaurant, called ‘Il Cedro’ in San Donato Milanese, where we enjoyed a tasty selection of Falafel, Kebbe, Fatayer, Sambousek and some Italian fare in the form of a Capriccioso pizza. Back at the room we collapsed - exhausted from another busy day with another to follow tomorrow - we explore Milan for our last day in Italy.
Date Saturday 9th 2010
City Milan
Currency Euro 1 = NZ$0.53
Climate Low 12c - High 18c - mostly cool and cloudy

We were up bright and early around 8am. Shaun had set the TV to wake us with a soothing TV programme. Instead we woke to a blaring TV noise asking us to select a channel - a lovely calming way to start the day, once we’d removed our fingernails from the ceiling!! Having plenty of time before the last free subway shuttle at 10am we showered, made a breakfast in our room and generally mucked around until we realised we’d missed the shuttle! Oh well, luckily we had only about 1km to walk to the subway and so this we did in the brisk fresh morning air.
We had read in on our 49p Milan map (which we had purchased in Edinburgh) - that we could get a 3 Euro day tripper card that we could use on the subway, buses, trams etc around the region. Being quite expert by now at reading foreign automatic ticket dispensing machines - we quickly found the appropriate ticket type and paid our 3 euro each for our Abbonamento Giornaliero Urbano. The journey into the Duomo stop, right in the centre of Milan, takes just 10 minutes and required no change on the subway from our station at San Donata. We were in the midst of tourist-mania by about 10.45am. Our mouths fell open as we exited the subway and our eyes fell on the most wonderful Duomo. Quite a breath-taking sight - and this was on a gloomy day. We could only imagine how the beautiful building would almost blind you with its brilliance in the sunshine. A few photos later we decided to go within this magnificent structure. On entering we realised a service was in session. This was quite magical as we witnessed some lovely singing reverberating around the immense basilica from what appeared to be thousands of church goers. It was interesting to note that unlike many other basilicas and cathedrals we have been into on this trip - there are no paintings adorning the interior walls of the building - just hanging works of art and the stained glass windows provide the colour here. Once outside in the large Piazza Duomo we headed the short distance across to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuel II. This elegant glass-roofed arcade links the Piazza Duomo with Piazza della Scala where the famous Teatra La Scala has become world-famous through its classical Italian Operas. From here we made tracks to Piazza Mercanti and then up Via Dante, window shopping at the expensive Italian clothes. At the top of Via Dante we started to explore Castello Sforzesco, venturing into the museum of music before being evicted by the staff at 12.50pm (closed from 1.00-2.00pm for lunch!) We hadn’t had a chance to look at the majority of the castle and the different museums hidden within its walls but the staff had to have their siesta!
Since we were expelled from the castle we decided to make our way to Santa Maria della Grazie, the home of the original ‘Last Supper’ painting created by Leonardo Da Vinci in the 1460’s. Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to actually see it in real life as the tickets are sold out 2 weeks in advance! We did however get the chance to see huge photos of the painting and to read about the troubled history of the church and both the degradation and restoration of the painting itself over the centuries to the present day. This would definitely be worth visiting and perhaps trying to book in advance!
We were keen to get back into the centre of Milan so jumped on a passing tram heading that way. This is a great way to see the city and it will save the feet! There are several different routes the trams take, but we managed to head in the general direction we were after. We crisscrossed our way across the city until we found ourselves back up by Castello Sforzesco. We were getting hungry by this stage so found a great cafe called Cafe’ de Ville, where we enjoyed a relaxing lunch and were also able to get online on wi-fi to check emails. Feeling refuelled and re-energised we meandered back down to Piazza Duomo. On the way we stumbled across a rock band complete with drum set, bass guitar and electric guitar/singer playing out of a VW combi! They were called ‘The Love Bus Experience’ and had quite a crowd grooving to the beat. We watched for a while before heading for Via Torina to do a spot of shopping. We popped in and out of several stores and only lightly imbibed in a bit of retail therapy. By this stage it was dark and time for us to take a break and rehydrate. We found the perfect place after Jen led us down an alleyway and we came across ‘Le Hora Feliz’ on the corner of Largo Gallarati and Via Papa Gregorio XIV. This had a happy hour running from 5pm-10pm, with all beer and cocktails 8 euro and the “happy hour” bit meant you could partake in a free buffet! This was quite a spread with salads, hot and cold pasta dishes, seafood pasta, fruit, pizza bread, chippies and sandwiches. The place was extremely buzzy and had a very energetic head cocktail maker - very animated and super speedy! Jennie had a strawberry daiquiri and Shaun a long island iced tea - both were very yummy! Once we’d had our fill we wandered back to the Duomo subway station to catch our ride home. The trains are very roomy, particularly when compared to the “clockwork orange” in Glasgow! On arrival at San Donata we waited for the free hotel shuttle to take us back to the hotel. There were a few people waiting for the shuttle and after about 20 minutes it came. Not a particularly frequent service - especially on the weekends. So, our day concluded a wonderful four weeks in Italy. It has been fantastic to experience such a diverse country. It seems to have everything - history, great cuisine and wine, beaches, beautiful rural countryside, excellent fashion, design and music. There is something for everyone and four weeks just scratches the surface. We think we’ll be back - with far more practice at the Italian language first!

Date Sunday 10th 2010
City Milan - London - Cairo
Currency Euro 1 = NZ$0.53
Climate Low 12c - High 19c - mostly fine

Today we would spend our time in airports and on planes - oh joy! As the hotel shuttle service is so infrequent on weekends - we had to take the 10am shuttle to the Linate airport - even though our flight to London wasn’t until 1.45pm. We were fortunate that we could check our bags all the way through from Milan to Cairo which was good as our transfer time in London was under two hours.
We had a bit of a zigzag in our trip to Cairo, detouring via London due to the round the world ticket we had. This meant we had to travel to London to make our connection, otherwise we would have preferred to have gone from Milan to Cairo direct! The flight was delayed in Milan for a ½ hour due to air traffic so we only had 1½ hours to relax at Heathrow, finding a hip restaurant called ‘Giraffe’ with a view over the ever-moving Terminal 5 open spaces to people-watch.

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