Cinco dias en Milano, Italia - "Five days in Milan, Italy"

This is the true story... of seven previous strangers... who chose to travel together...room together and have their lives documented by photographs... to find out what happens... when people stop being shy... and start getting real...The Real World: Milan.

Ok, so this isn’t The Real World TV show, but 7 of us did decide to travel together to Milan before any of us even knew each other. Kind of crazy, kind of spur of the moment. But things turned out great! Here’s a play by play of each day we spent in Milan and Verona in Italy.

Day 1:
Getting to the airport wasn’t too stressful except that one of our traveling buddies Lauren was lost in Murcia and didn’t know her way to the bus station. There was some miscommunications about meeting time and place, although luckily, Lauren made it to the bus stop with a minute to spare before we departed to the airport 40 minutes away. We had booked our flight to Milan through Ryanair, an airline that is super cheap to use to fly around Europe. Although, we found out, the fees add up quickly if you’re a centimeter over the carry-on size baggage limits, or a kilo over the weight limit. Our carry-ons were measured, weighed, and re-measured. The flight itself was interesting to say the least. Once you board, you choose your own seat. No food or beverage carts were brought by on the 2 hour flight, though smokeless cigarettes were brought by to be sold, as well as a perfume cart, and lottery tickets. Upon landing, a celebratory trumpet tune was played on the intercom followed by “another successful landing by Ryanair”, and applause by the passengers.

As the airport we landed at is actually outside of Milan, we took a bus to the city center. The 40 minute ride was peaceful at first, until it started snowing as we got closer to Milan. Once in Milan, we whipped out our umbrellas and donned our hoods of our coats to prevent getting wet. Although, none of us were equipped with proper snow-shoes and had soaked feet within minutes. To avoid the confusion of trying to ask which bus to take to our hostel (as only one of us had any knowledge of the Italian language), we decided to take a taxi. As Isabella (with three years of Italian classes under her belt) got a taxi for 4 of the group members and directed it to the hostel, the other 3 of us were a little lost with how to tell our taxi driver where to go. We just repeated the street name with our best attempt at an Italian accent several times. We eventually got there to be greeted with piles of snow building up. Once in our hostel, we found out they had overbooked and there wasn’t room for one of us. We persuaded the desk-worker to let us all stay together and just share some beds instead. He couldn’t understand why we “were causing problems” with the situation. In the U.S., we would’ve gotten a free upgrade for a situation like that, but these are the cultural differences I am learning. We were split between two rooms and were welcomed with complimentary bottles of wine.

Our day of traveling left us hungry, so we ventured into the streets to try to find a restaurant. After about 15 minutes of misery in the snow with cold and wet feet, we stopped at a restaurant that appeared open. In reality, they didn’t open until 7:30 and we showed up at 6:30. We must have looked desperate because they let us in anyways. We sat for about 45 minutes before we ordered anything though. We each ordered a personal pizza, which turned out to be enough for 2 or 3 people. And we all finished our pizzas. Sad, yes. But the pizza was AMAZING. By the time we finished dinner, the snowing had turned into a downpour of rain. We practically ran towards our hostel, only to be distracted by a supermarket where we bought too many cookies and too much chocolate. We stayed up drinking wine and eating cookies before we passed out in our rooms. At 5 am in my room, all of us woke up to the most intense sauna of a room ever. After fixing the heater, life was great again.

Day 2:
We woke up on day 2 to breakfast in bed (yes, our hostel was more like a hotel). We spent the day exploring Milan. We took a bus to the main plaza where the Cathedral of Milan is located (called the Duomo). It’s the fourth largest church in the world. Words can’t even begin to describe how huge and beautiful this church is. At the plaza, we quickly learned that hecklers can spot tourists a mile away. These men kept handing string bracelets to us, and some even tied them onto our wrists without our consent. Then they asked for money for the bracelets to “support Africa”. There were dozens of these men all over Milan. Also, while trying to take pictures of the Duomo, a man came up and poured birdseed into my hand, causing dozens of pigeons to land on me or near me. I didn’t ask the man to pour the seeds into my hand, but he then demanded money. I shook my head and walked away, but we got some cool pictures from it.

We also checked out the fortress of Milan, called Castello Sforzesco. It was built in 1368 to defend the city from attacks. The fortress is huge and also beautiful. Once inside, we checked out a museum filled with various pieces of history of Milan, including armory, weapons, art, sculptures, and musical instruments. Leonardo di Vinci had painted some of the ceilings inside the fortress, and some of his artwork was even displayed in the museum.

Sidenote: As Milan is the fashion capital of the world, we viewed some of the world’s most expensive clothing brands, saw dogs wearing designer coats and sweaters, saw some outrageously expensive cars parked on the streets, and we witnessed a pair of heels for several thousand Euros. A very common site was to see an older woman covered head to toe in fur: a huge fur coat going down to her knees and a cap to cover her head, also covered in long thick fur. It was a little outrageous, but it was so common in Milan. Also, trollies, trains, buses, taxis and car all drove together in harmony on one street. I don't know how they did it, but every street was covered in railroad tracks, and somehow cars avoided getting hit.

We returned to our hostel to check out a nearby restaurant that was recommended to us. We were given complimentary drinks, bread sticks, toast with bruschetta, plain bread to eat with our dinners, cookies and candies at the end of the meal, and a shot of limonchello alcohol each. That was just the free part of our meal. We ordered pizzas (again). Mine was spinach and ricotta, and was the best pizza I’ve ever had in my life. We went back to our hostel and met two girls from California who were studying in Madrid, Spain, though were also visiting Milan for a few days. We drank wine with them before deciding to check out Milan’s nightlife. A travel book we had been following pointed us to a neighborhood with tons of nightlife and bars.

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Unfortunately, our bus ride was cut short. Either the bus driver realized we didn’t have bus passes or he was annoyed with the Americans being loud on the bus (even though we were the only ones on it). He dropped us off on a random street near the Duomo. We were able to find the neighborhood with no problems though. We came to a street with dozens of people drinking outside in the street, even though it was freezing. We joined them outside. We spent several hours meeting Italians, experiencing Italian nightlife (which seemed rather dull compared to Spain's), and then trying to find a taxi to our hostel, which took some strenuous effort, but eventually it was accomplished.

Day 3:

My favorite day! We got up early to head to the train station. We bought tickets to head to Verona, Italy. Verona, the setting for Romeo and Juliet, was historic, beautiful, and everything I had thought Italy would be.

We viewed “Juliet’s balcony”. An entryway to her balcony is covered in thousands of letters, notes, graffiti marks, and marker written on the wall, all with love notes to their lovers or their name with their lover’s name. The notes are in dozens of different languages and come from people from all over the world. It was a cool feeling to be there and witness a place where so many people had declared their love for someone else. I of course, had to leave my mark on the wall as well! A statue of Juliet stands below her balcony, where rubbing her right breast is supposed to bring luck in love. We fought off the crowd for our turn to take a picture rubbing her breast. Strange tradition, but why not right? We continued our journey through Verona where we purchased authentic Italian gelato (mine was Hazelnut). I was in heaven. We came to one of Verona’s main plazas, where a huge tower was overlooking the city. We got to the top of the 368 stair tower just in time for sunset. It was beautiful. We could view Verona’s river, the colliseum of Verona, all of the beautiful architecture, and the castle overlooking the city. After a scrumptious outside dinner by a fire heater on the plaza where we watched horse-drawn carriages and people galore, we decided to check out the colliseum (Arena di Verona), which is internationally known for its amazing opera performances.

After climbing to the top and taking our fair shair of photos, we had to head back to Milan. Unfortunately, we got on the wrong train (the first class train). There was nowhere for us to sit, and we spent the entirety of our train ride avoiding the ticket man who would surely fine us (we were already fined in our morning train for not “validating our tickets” before we got on). We stood in the in-between car of the train where the bathrooms were. Eventually the train stopped, and we got off at the station. We waited about 45 minutes for our actual train to arrive, which we took back to Milan.

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Day 4 and 5:

We spent both of these days checking out sites that our travel book recommended to us. Unfortunately, whoever wrote the travel book was in Milan during the summer months, not the cold winter. It was too unbearable for us to really go out and explore a whole lot. We did get some great shopping in, so we can claim wearing clothes from the fashion capital of the world. We checked out the Navigli district of Milan, which is supposed to be the “Venice of Milan”, a series of channels through part of the city with boats and romantic canoes. When we got there, the water was completely dried up and the boats were beached. So much for that plan. We also checked out a church that our book claimed to be incredible. We were unimpressed when we arrived. Compared to the Duomo, this church seemed like nothing. On our way to the Navigli district we came across these stairs leading to the metro which were like piano keys. We had way too much fun with these!

We did check out two museums filled with works of Leonardo di Vinci. We saw his huge cartoon sketch which was his practice for his "School of Athens" painting. We also got to view pieces from his Codex (a book he used to doodle about everything). It contained poems, paintings, inventions, instructions, proposals for the city, and so much more. Leonardo was clearly a genius. Other than that, for the most part, we spent a lot of time trying great coffee places, tea places, trying to find food places our book recommended but that we could never find, and just being really cold. We ended up eating at the same restaurant we ate at the second night (with all the free stuff). We tried gnocci, some great pastas, more pizzas, and some amazing Italian dessert.

After this trip, I’ve learned all of six Italian words, which I used the entire time I was there.

• Gratzie (thank you) was used not only for “thank you”, but also for “I loved your food”, “can’t wait to eat here again”, and generally when I didn’t know what else to say.
• Scuzzi (excuse me), was used for “excuse me, I’m lost”, “I totally just ran into you”, “could you be walking any slower?”, “don’t mind me, I’m just a lost American who doesn’t speak an ounce of Italian”, and again for when I didn’t know what else to say.
• Bonjourno (hello) was used only for hello.
• Ciao (hello/goodbye) was used for both hello and goodbye!
• Arriverderci (goodbye) was too difficult to say so I did not use it.
• Dove sono (where is) wasn’t really used because I couldn’t say what I was looking for.

Overall, this trip showed me some amazing and beautiful sites of Italy. It also showed me that I probably won’t return to Milan. The city is extremely modern, pretty similar to what we have in the United States already. Now I know. I would definately love to go back to Verona though. The place of Romeo and Juliet? It doesn't get much more romantic than that! Hopefully I’ll also get a chance to check out Florence, Venice, or Rome sometime during my current travels in Europe or later in my life so I can check out some authentic historical sites. I also learned that traveling to northern parts of a country in Europe in January can lead to some very cold times. Although, we made it through, had a blast, and I’m so glad I went!

The group I traveled with!