Milano

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Milan, Italy:

First of all, Milan is a much larger city than I expected, and because of its location much farther inland than other Italian cities, it is also much hotter with significantly more humidity. The train station is incredibly large and intimidating when you first arrive in the city, but you immediately can recognize that you are in the fashion capital of the world. Dolce & Gabbana advertisements line the walls of the station, and everyone is dressed to the T. But we only had one night in Milan, and we were planning on a 7am departure for Nice so that we could get to St. Tropez by 4 or 5 in the afternoon. If we waited any later, we wouldn’t get into our hotel in St. Tropez until almost 9pm.

We checked into our hotel and did some walking around the city and back to the train station to make reservations for our early train the next day. However, we forgot to bring our Eurail passes, and they wouldn’t let us buy a reservation without them, so there was nothing we could do but go back to the hotel because we wouldn’t have time to get back to the station before it closed. We called them from the hotel and they told us we shouldn’t have problems buying the reservation in the morning, so we figured we’d just have to test our luck at 6am. After a quick dinner, we dressed and went to an area called Corso Como and then to a place called Karma that we were told to go to by a few Milan natives that we had spoken to. A friend of Park is a model and has been in Milan for about a month working on photo shoots, so he gave us the name of a friend of his at Karma which helped us bypass the line, but not the €20 cover. This was an incredible outdoor area with at least 1000 of the most beautiful Italians I have ever seen. With that being said, not one person we talked to spoke a word of English, but it was fun to be amongst the Italians rather than the tourist spots. It was definitely a place that you would never find in a guidebook, but the best environment we have found in Italy so far.

In fact, we loved it so much, that we decided to extend our stay in Milan. After some complicated maneuvering of hotels and dates, and a few arguments over cancellation charges, we are now spending the weekend in Milan instead of St. Tropez. St. Tropez would be incredible on the weekend, but although we might be able to look, talk, dress, and act like international jet-setters, we do not have the bank accounts to back it up nor the ability to get into some of the most exclusive places in the world on the weekend. So Sunday we will leave for St. Tropez for 2 nights, and then spend the next 2 nights in Juan Les Pins before going to Geneva on Thursday.

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Photos

Duomo
Classic Milan