Milan, Italy

The girls walking around Milan. 

Be warned. I should've written down day by day activities while I was there, so this blog post about the trip to Milan is going to be kind of scattered. 

Before traveling to Milan, Italy, I had images of glitz and glamour. I also thought it might be gloomy. Turns out, Milan is very expensive if you enjoy shopping in high end stores and eating in high end restaurants; however, if you scouted out the right places, it was very easy to enjoy yourself on a budget. A group of 7 of us (6 girls and 1 boy) went to Milan for five days. Most of us thought five days would be too long in one city, but one of the girls insisted that it was impossible to see Milan in just a weekend...that turned out to be false. We all knew of each other but only a couple of us were actually closer friends. 

The flight to Milan was possibly the worst flight of my life. I was already suffering from a cold and the flight on Ryanair made my ears do things they have never done before. It literally felt like they were bleeding from the inside. Once in Milan, we all regrouped and realized only one person in our entire group spoke a tiny bit of Italian and there were words being spoken around us that we didn't understand. For once, I felt just like the English students studying in Spain..dazed and confused.

 

The first day in Milan was probably the worst day for everyone. It had started to snow a lot and a lot of the people in our group hardly see snow because they live in the south. It felt like I was back in South Dakota and it felt very welcoming. After settling into our hostel and getting our free wine, we ventured out into the snow to find some Italian food. Mama Oliva served us our first Italian pizza. We hadn't had lunch, so each person at our table ordered his/her own pizza and every single person finished it off. The pizza I ordered had eggplant all over it. Absolutely delicious. 

On our way back to the hostel, we ran into a supermarket and ran in to grab some wine, chocolate, Nutella and cookies. That night, the only guy on our trip got a taste of what women do when they're cold and tired. 

The next day was the big day. We had our ritual free breakfast at the hostel (yogurt, cappuccino, chocolate croissant) and headed out to find the electric tram that would take us to the famous and beautiful Duomo.

 

The Duomo is the type of thing that you want to try to take a lot of pictures of, but at first glance, you're literally taken aback by its enormous size and dark appearance. It's so large, that you would see it from a distance and feel like it takes forever to reach it, until you finally get right next to it and you feel so incredibly small and plain.

Overall, we saw the Duomo four days: in the morning, in the afternoon, at night and after a good night out with the locals. 

Minuscule me outside the Duomo.

At the hostel, we met two other American girls studying in Madrid and we went out at night with them. Here, we are all waiting for the tram to take us to the downtown area where all the locals go out. The other girl we met is taking the photo. (Top row: Me, Erin, Bella, Lauren. Bottom row: Amy, Megan, Brayan and Sam.)

The rest of the days were spent walking around Milan, eating and visiting museums. We went to a museum that had original Leonardo da Vinci drawings on displays. 

Verona, Italy, was probably the highlight of the entire trip to Italy. The story of Romeo and Juliet has always been one of my favorite ones. I've read the plays and loved all the movies, so it was amazing to be able to be in the city where it all took place. On the way into Juliet's balcony patio, people have written their names, posted pictures, etc with their names and their loved once. Since I didn't know exactly what to write, I wrote both my parent's names in a heart. 

Not only was the city beautiful, but the weather was amazing. On the way back, we ended up getting on a train that was too expensive for our tickets, so we hid in the middle of the cars until we could get off and hop on the right train. The next four pictures are of the Milan railway station, Isabella, Megan and I eating our first gelato (delicious), a street in Verona and of Juliet's balcony. 

This photo was taken inside the opera house in Verona. From the outside, it looks like a smaller colosseum surrounded by cafes and shops. 

Overall, you could say the trip to Milan was a success. There were only a few times where our travel book led us in the wrong direction and where some of us started getting tired and ill; however, if there had been less of us on the trip, it wouldn't have been the same. We had a lot of good food: pizza for dinner 3 times, gnochi, tortellini in Verona, etc. The worst food I had on the entire trip was the one food that should have tasted amazing. For lunch in Milan, we stopped at this small restaurant and I ordered a milanesa with potatoes. Let's just say, my mom and Uruguay in general make the best milanesas in the entire world. 

The group outside the Duomo.