Milano in a few hours

After leaving behind the beauty and luxury of Cote d’Azur, we headed towards Switzerland with the intention to make some pit stops on the Italian coast along the way. However, being a little pressured by time, we decided to eventually skip the coast and let it become a reason for a future trip and instead offer the Italian capital city, Milano, more hours of our time.

The interesting thing about this eurotrip was that in most of the cases I realised that the preconceptions I had about a certain city or place were just partly true if not complete BS. The same happened with Milano. I have always pictured it as a city of fashion, glamour, luxury, with streets bustling with life and activities. I was disappointed to find an almost empty city. Very few cars, very few people. The only place buzzing with people was the Cathedral (Duomo di Milano) and the Vittorio Emanuele II Gallery. Obviously, we didn’t have time to walk around through the whole city to see where everyone was, but I can only suppose that the locals were on holiday, gathering forces for the arrival of another Fashion Week.

I couldn’t enter the Cathedral, as I was wearing shorts and a shirt and didn’t have anything to cover my shoulders, but I admired it from the outside. Although they say it’s the fifth largest cathedral in the world, I thought it was actually smaller than I had imagined it from the pictures. And the sensation was probably given because the square in front of it is so huge that it takes away a bit from the grandeur of this Gothic edifice. I like Gothic cathedrals that make you feel small when standing close to them, but this one didn’t impress me much regarding this aspect. It’s beautiful, nevertheless, and it took six centuries to complete, so that’s something!

Then we tried blending in with the torrent of tourists inside the Vittorio Emanuele II Gallery. It is one of the highlights of the beginnings of the shopping malls, marking the moment the architects and engineers discovered that you can cover a street and gather more people to stroll on it’s pavement and visit the shops alongside it.

Here’s were we decided to have lunch, in one of the oldest shopping malls (and a much more beautiful one that the examples we are building today). We had the classical pizza and pasta, but I was a bit disappointed with the food, as my expectations were sky-high because of the place.

Let me know in a comment below what’s the most important thing I might have missed in Milano! 🙂 I’m looking forward to giving it another chance in the future and I want to be prepared!