Third Europe trip part 4 - Milan
The contrast between the 2 countries is uncanny - after 4 hours drive through lavish and polished Switzerland we entered Milan and felt funnily relaxed looking at graffiti filled walls and basic buildings with laundry hanging out from the balconies.
The railway station and roads, though spotless and organized, didn't seem as clean as those in Swiss - can't quite put a finger on what aspect bought that enormous difference.
Even so, I felt quite happy to be in Italy. May be its the movement - even fast moving trains in Switzerland seemed quite still and the vibrancy is only in the colors of flowers, whereas in Italy, lets just say the beauty of flowers is not the first thing which would be noticed.
Anyway, the studio apartment we booked is about 10 mins walk away and walking through the streets of Milan somehow reminded me of Hyderabad.
It was way past 9 p.m by the time we reached the reception. I was relieved as there is slight delay in the train and check-in after 10 p.m require prior notification. After finishing up the formalities, we entered the apartment complex which is kind of fashioned. I didn't see the wooden latches on doors since our grand parents' house got re-modeled in our village. Though they bought out the nostalgia, it was quite hard to open which was even more irritating when we were running out of time next morning.
I don't know why I booked studio apartment as we weren't planning on cooking nor had time to. I didn't book the tickets to Venice and suddenly my card stopped working for on-line transactions. Somehow, we managed to book tickets and slept off. As much as I love to write about Venice again, I already gave my testimony to my love for the city here.
By the time we returned to our apartment it was past 10. My sister went to pizza place next door and i stayed back tired and heart broken to have left Venice so soon. My sister got back with a veg pizza, which wasn't in the menu but the super sweet restaurateur made it with various vegetables used as toppings in other pizzas. Nothing could lift mood better than an amazing pizza and that is the best I had so far. I went back for another - this time to the one on the menu, ham & pineapple and a Tiramisu. I completely lost interest in pizza after that as I would know they couldn't even hold light to those.
We scrapped the plan to visit Pisa after the trouble I went through to book tickets to Venice and decided to explore Milan instead. Only we had to shift to a hotel as I booked the apartment only for 2 days.
The check-in process took a while and I walked around a bit.
The showers in our previous stay were quite brief owing to the tiny size of the bathroom, so we took our time taking long and refreshing shower in our new room. Needless to say, it was almost 3 p.m by the time we started.
Vintagy decor in the hotel:
In Milan, travel passes could be purchased from few restaurants, but we had to go to few of them as the day passes got over in many as it was late in the day. Other option is to take single pass and go to some major tube station. Fortunately in the last restaurant we tried, they got few left and saved us some time.
We went to Santa Maria delle Grazie where the museum, housing the famous last supper painting, is located, but first - lunch😁.
Our first disappointment of the day greeted at the museum - entrance tickets require 2 weeks advance booking. Online booking might have an off chance of availability in unlikely event of last-day cancellations, but direct entry is not possible😒.
We just had to be content to visit the adjoining church.
Then to Leonardo's vineyard, which he used to spent most of his time at while painting Last Supper.
We had to wait for the audio tour to start and had coffee meanwhile. I learnt that cafe creme is not Italian equivalent of cafe latte but is actually creme in coffee flavor. The nice gentleman at the counter accommodated my mistake and gladly replaced it with hot coffee for no extra charge even though I offered to pay.
Leonardo's vineyard and the house were inherited by his helper who wanted to retain its original structure. It was damaged during a fire accident and re-built in same way, so except for few spots, most of the vineyard and house are re-structured.
From the vineyard, we went to castello sforzesco, which housed the last sculpture of Michelangelo incomplete due to his death.
But by the time we reached, the museum was closed - not that we would have seen anything in half hour.
It seemed like Michel and I are star-crossed 😜- every time I thought I got close to his work, they are either closed or I got the information wrong and am at different place. Maybe because I always favored Leo more 😉.
Next to famous Duamo with even worse timing. The counter closed with 2 people before us 😭.
Hopefully my sis starts planning based on opening times instead of closing times in future 😏. Her failed attempts, to convince the counter lady into letting us in, was fun to watch - my best unsaid "I told you so".
While my sister was pouting in annoyance, I went to look at the famous shopping mall - Gallario Vittorio which housed many luxury labels including the biggest Prada store😍.
I did not do a prior check on this mall to decide what I could get from here. So I just picked up a small gift and a flower shaped ice-cream.
Apparently, the mall is spectacular in night lights. However, since we visited during summer, it was nowhere close to getting dark even though it was past 7 p.m.
Also we had an early flight next day and returned to the hotel.
On the way, we picked up tickets to 5 a.m shuttle bus to airport (the service is available at the central railway station and tickets are priced at 5 Euros).
Reluctantly, we had non-Italian dinner at nearby restaurant 😩. If it is up to me, I would have gone to the pizzeria, we had dinner from the previous night. We informed at the reception that we would be checking out early and wouldn't need breakfast (only hotel in our trip which offered complimentary breakfast 😧). Next morning, despite my worst fears, we woke up on time and headed to the bus-stop. The bus ride to airport is complete blur, the only part in the trip I couldn't recollect.
I did not get anything in Milan airport either, but, amazed by the decor of this outlet couldn't resist picking up a bottle of Chianti along with few tiny pots of limoncello.
There were certainly quite a few things I would like to do differently in Italy like checking the journey duration between cities and booking the train tickets in advance, staying in Venice at least for a day, checking if entrance to places of interest require advance booking, planning with last entry times, if not opening time, instead of closing times and last but not least extending the trip for another day. Especially since the price of flight tickets were same the next day, Italy undoubtedly deserve longer stay.
The railway station and roads, though spotless and organized, didn't seem as clean as those in Swiss - can't quite put a finger on what aspect bought that enormous difference.
Even so, I felt quite happy to be in Italy. May be its the movement - even fast moving trains in Switzerland seemed quite still and the vibrancy is only in the colors of flowers, whereas in Italy, lets just say the beauty of flowers is not the first thing which would be noticed.
Anyway, the studio apartment we booked is about 10 mins walk away and walking through the streets of Milan somehow reminded me of Hyderabad.
It was way past 9 p.m by the time we reached the reception. I was relieved as there is slight delay in the train and check-in after 10 p.m require prior notification. After finishing up the formalities, we entered the apartment complex which is kind of fashioned. I didn't see the wooden latches on doors since our grand parents' house got re-modeled in our village. Though they bought out the nostalgia, it was quite hard to open which was even more irritating when we were running out of time next morning.
I don't know why I booked studio apartment as we weren't planning on cooking nor had time to. I didn't book the tickets to Venice and suddenly my card stopped working for on-line transactions. Somehow, we managed to book tickets and slept off. As much as I love to write about Venice again, I already gave my testimony to my love for the city here.
By the time we returned to our apartment it was past 10. My sister went to pizza place next door and i stayed back tired and heart broken to have left Venice so soon. My sister got back with a veg pizza, which wasn't in the menu but the super sweet restaurateur made it with various vegetables used as toppings in other pizzas. Nothing could lift mood better than an amazing pizza and that is the best I had so far. I went back for another - this time to the one on the menu, ham & pineapple and a Tiramisu. I completely lost interest in pizza after that as I would know they couldn't even hold light to those.
We scrapped the plan to visit Pisa after the trouble I went through to book tickets to Venice and decided to explore Milan instead. Only we had to shift to a hotel as I booked the apartment only for 2 days.
The check-in process took a while and I walked around a bit.
The showers in our previous stay were quite brief owing to the tiny size of the bathroom, so we took our time taking long and refreshing shower in our new room. Needless to say, it was almost 3 p.m by the time we started.
Vintagy decor in the hotel:
In Milan, travel passes could be purchased from few restaurants, but we had to go to few of them as the day passes got over in many as it was late in the day. Other option is to take single pass and go to some major tube station. Fortunately in the last restaurant we tried, they got few left and saved us some time.
We went to Santa Maria delle Grazie where the museum, housing the famous last supper painting, is located, but first - lunch😁.
Our first disappointment of the day greeted at the museum - entrance tickets require 2 weeks advance booking. Online booking might have an off chance of availability in unlikely event of last-day cancellations, but direct entry is not possible😒.
We just had to be content to visit the adjoining church.
Then to Leonardo's vineyard, which he used to spent most of his time at while painting Last Supper.
We had to wait for the audio tour to start and had coffee meanwhile. I learnt that cafe creme is not Italian equivalent of cafe latte but is actually creme in coffee flavor. The nice gentleman at the counter accommodated my mistake and gladly replaced it with hot coffee for no extra charge even though I offered to pay.
Leonardo's vineyard and the house were inherited by his helper who wanted to retain its original structure. It was damaged during a fire accident and re-built in same way, so except for few spots, most of the vineyard and house are re-structured.
From the vineyard, we went to castello sforzesco, which housed the last sculpture of Michelangelo incomplete due to his death.
But by the time we reached, the museum was closed - not that we would have seen anything in half hour.
It seemed like Michel and I are star-crossed 😜- every time I thought I got close to his work, they are either closed or I got the information wrong and am at different place. Maybe because I always favored Leo more 😉.
Next to famous Duamo with even worse timing. The counter closed with 2 people before us 😭.
Hopefully my sis starts planning based on opening times instead of closing times in future 😏. Her failed attempts, to convince the counter lady into letting us in, was fun to watch - my best unsaid "I told you so".
While my sister was pouting in annoyance, I went to look at the famous shopping mall - Gallario Vittorio which housed many luxury labels including the biggest Prada store😍.
Apparently, the mall is spectacular in night lights. However, since we visited during summer, it was nowhere close to getting dark even though it was past 7 p.m.
Also we had an early flight next day and returned to the hotel.
On the way, we picked up tickets to 5 a.m shuttle bus to airport (the service is available at the central railway station and tickets are priced at 5 Euros).
Reluctantly, we had non-Italian dinner at nearby restaurant 😩. If it is up to me, I would have gone to the pizzeria, we had dinner from the previous night. We informed at the reception that we would be checking out early and wouldn't need breakfast (only hotel in our trip which offered complimentary breakfast 😧). Next morning, despite my worst fears, we woke up on time and headed to the bus-stop. The bus ride to airport is complete blur, the only part in the trip I couldn't recollect.
I did not get anything in Milan airport either, but, amazed by the decor of this outlet couldn't resist picking up a bottle of Chianti along with few tiny pots of limoncello.
There were certainly quite a few things I would like to do differently in Italy like checking the journey duration between cities and booking the train tickets in advance, staying in Venice at least for a day, checking if entrance to places of interest require advance booking, planning with last entry times, if not opening time, instead of closing times and last but not least extending the trip for another day. Especially since the price of flight tickets were same the next day, Italy undoubtedly deserve longer stay.
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