Milano

What happens when three americans and one spanish girl travel to Milano together? Linguistic gynmnastics, that's what. Using whatever combination of English, Spanish, and if you can believe it, French amongst ourselves, and Italian with the rest of the world, we headed off to see as much as we could of the city known for music, art, and fashion in only twenty-four hours.

The first thing we discovered was that our hostel no longer had room for us and had to send us to the three-star hotel a few streets down. Life is tough, I know. The second thing we discovered was that our hotel was really, really far away from the actual city. No problem, because Milano has an excellent subway system.

We first hit up the Duomo, which I think might be the tallest building inside I've ever seen. Very gothic, the vibrant and slender stained glass windows gleaming in the late afternoon sun among the soaring gray stone. Unfortunately, we couldn't stay long because they were closing for the afternoon, so we consoled ourselves by walking along the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, one of the most famous shopping streets in the world. It is a covered shopping area connecting the Piazza del Duomo with the Piazza della Scala. There you can find your Prada, Armani, and all their friends, but at the very center of the Galleria, I found a gem: the nicest McDonald's I've ever seen. It's gotta keep up with the Joneses, after all.

After window-shopping, we headed to La Scala, and were able to get into a box and see the opera house first-hand, then we checked out the museum. The only problem with the museum was that it was filled with German schoolchildren who had no interest in opera and clogged all the walkways. Some problems are just universal, I suppose.

After La Scala, we strolled through the Brera region of the city, and had a cappuccino before continuing our walking tour. We found the city gardens and the giant Castello Sforzesco which doubles as an art museum. On our way looking for dinner, we found an outdoor food market that was still open, even at eight o'clock at night! We couldn't miss the opportunity, and tried some sicilian pastries, ruining our dinner, but, hey, we're in college, right?!

Saturday morning we went to the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, the oldest art museum in Milano. There we saw some Leonardo da Vinci sketches and his "Musico," Rafaello's sketch of "The School at Athens," and the gloves Napoleon wore at the Battle of Waterloo, among other things, of course.

We had only a short amount of time before we needed to head back to the train station (a side note: the Milano train station is beautiful, especially for a train station). We ate lunch at the ritzy McDonalds in the Galleria. I told Vicky it was ok that we were eating McDonalds because we were "with americans." Then I remembered my own nationality, and corrected the statement and hid in my Big Mac.

Milano is a lovely city, and I very much enjoyed being there. The interesting thing we found about it was that it doesn't send out a very italian vibe. It's more like a little bit of the rest of Europe in Italy. In fact, it reminded each of us of a different city, Paris, Barcelona, Vienna. I felt like I got a very good look at the city, and I've decided that I will only return if I become enormously wealthy, to be able to enjoy the other side of the music, art, and fashion. But I never found those Milano cookies, sorry, Mom.

Signed, the Sengenblogger