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Published: February 23rd 2010
Easter in Milan 2009 089
Looking cool and having lunch Milan style!Hi Friends and Family,
As promised I'm back! I'm going to fill in my blog as best I can but unfortunately, the dates are going to be a bit lopsided. In short, inaccurately dated!
Ah well!
Oh yes, as I was saying - Milano.
Easter 2009 was a brilliant time for us all. the weather was fabulous in Berlin and we had a lovely time with some family friends and their kids hunting for Easter eggs and drinking beer and sausages in Volkspark ( a very huge famous page in East Berlin ) with an equally famous restaurant and lake ( "Schoenbrunn" ) if any one is intererested.
After family celebrations, Frank and I decided to have some "me" time and booked a flight to Milan via an on-line site called "Edreams" which proved to be pretty reliable and thus we were able to fly out via AirBerlin and fly home again via Easyjet I think. I can't remember the details anymore.
We also did a bit of surfing and booked a 4-star hotel on-line called "Hotel Milano Corso Genova" at a cost of €219 for three nights.
COMBINED!
The hotel was centrally
located and was very close to the river.
And so we were ready to go. Opps don't forget the guide book. Oh yes, that's right.
The first time I went to Milan was an - I'm-so-bored-what-shall-I-do-type-of-trip in May 1999 and I used the exact same guidebook "Milan & Lombardy published by the Touring Club Italiano!
Some things just never change LOL and the guidebook was still as successful as the first time I used it many years ago!!
We left on Easter Monday and the weather was absolutely stunning.
In Berlin!
Just kidding. It was glorious in Milan too. In fact, it was so hot that we were in our T-shirts as per usual.
However, the Italians had a different opinion as almost every Milano we met was decked up in jumpers, scarves and bodywarmers!
Ah well, more sun for us then!!
Our flight was easy-going and we took the airport bus - The Malpensa Shuttle - into Stazione Centrale which is Milan's main railway station. Our hotel was a 10 minute tram stop away and could have been even closer but it depends on the tram that you take.
Of course!
The hotel - "Hotel Milano Corso Genova" was a nice 4- star place in Sant'Ambrogio which is known as historic Milan surrounded by winding streets, studios, boutiques and trattorias.
Our hotel was filled with mainly young international tourists and a couple of Italian ones too. We spied a couple of Brits and Americans in the dining room where breakfast was included and lot of free newspapers of the international variety.
We got there in the early noon so we dropped our stuff and then hit the town. Its Milano baby and its been a while!
The city centre was the main point of call and you can check it out in the photos.
The Duomo is one of the most beautiful Cathedrals in the world and with good reason. It is the third largest cathedral after St. Peter's cathedral in Rome and the cathedral of Seville. Its construction began in 1386 and continued for several more centuries and its architecture is a mixture of Gothic, Baroque, Neo-Classical and neo-Gothic styles!
On our first day, we just mingled around and took photos just like the other tourists. We took a few videos in
the magnificent glass-roofed Galleria which was designed by Giuseppe in 1864 and links piazza del Duomo and piazza della Scala and houses very fashionble bars and restaurants and of course "Prada" the designer made all the more famous by the book and film "The devil wears Prada"!
The Galleria is a bit of a tourist trap so we had lunch at a lovely little restaurant in Brera which is the Bohemian / Artist quarter but still had to put our finger out as prices were out of this world AND you had to pay a service charge for EVERY individual glass of ( yummy ) wine or cup of expresso.
Its a good thing that I don't drink coffee LOL!
I mean pizza was sold at a rate of €8 -€9 at even the "cheapist" place and was rather pushing it I felt. We just couldn't understand why pasta and pizza were at mad prices when in Berlin you could get "good enough" pizza for €3,50!
Ah well. maybe we're paying for the liberty of looking at the Milanese cobbles!
We found another little neat restaurant which was on a corner of a historic building.
It was a lovely piece of Art and so we made a reservation to eat out there on our last evening in Milan.....
The fantastic thing about our hotel was its rather brilliant location. We were just a few paces away from The Imperial Palace and its ruins and at night the quietness of the area could not be rivaled.
Good Night then!
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