europe un(lish)ed: there is more to milan than fashion

The weekend before Thanksgiving, we took a weekend trip to Milan. The flights were so cheap (under $100 each), it was a no-brainer. We had heard less-than-stellar reviews about the city -- dirty, small, few sights to see, and our friends' car was broken into in Milan. However, there were a couple of big draws that made it seem worthwhile to us, including Leonardo Da Vinci's The Last Supper and the Duomo. Plus, we are big fans of Italian food and wine, so if all else failed, we'd eat and drink our way through this weekend and still call it a win.

After a quick 45 minute flight on Friday evening, we took a painfully slow bus into the city (I had started to forget what rush hour traffic was like), navigated the subway system, dropped our bags at the hotel, and were ready to stuff our faces. Being the planner that I am, I had done some research about the best restaurants in Milan. There were a handful of very highly rated restaurants about 10 minutes walk from our hotel, so we headed that direction. After finding that my two top picks were fully booked, and awkwardly entering a private, very fancy, and slightly geriatric dinner party, I let Ryan choose a hole-in-the-wall looking pizza place across the street. Ryan is proving to be the best food chooser in the world. I can only describe this pizza as the kind that I used to dream about from watching cartoons. For some reason, the cartoon Doug particularly comes to mind. The kind where the cheese is so abundant, and the pizza comes out so piping hot, that it literally oozes off of the slices. YUM.

On Saturday, we packed in some tourist attractions. We started the day by viewing The Last Supper mural, which is hard to get tickets for. Luckily, since we were there during the off season, I was able to grab the last appointment available for the weekend when I looked for tickets a couple weeks prior. Each appointment group is corralled through a few glass chambers before entering the room for 15 minutes only. I didn't think I'd ever want to study a single painting for longer than this amount of time, but I was proved wrong. It was highly fascinating and well worth the trip.

No photos inside, but this is the church where The Last Supper mural resides.

Next, we joined a free walking tour to learn about the city of Milan. I will let the tour unfold through photos.

Our first glimpse of the Duomo from the back.

Inside the world's first shopping mall!

Spinning circles with your heel in this divot brings good luck.

Probably learning about the Milan coat of arms or some other tile art on the floor of the mall.

The castle grounds.

The Duomo

What would a trip to Milan be without a little shopping (and window-shopping)? After the tour, we spent a couple of hours admiring the expensive shops, and then went to the budget stores for the real shopping. One such store was so crowded that there were two security guards, a rope, and a line to get in the store. Once inside, everyone kind of filed around in a line because it was impossible to deviate from the movement of the crowd. It was the Walmart of the fashion world.

On Saturday night, we had reserved a table at the restaurant I had wanted to go to the previous evening. We slowly walked through the neighborhood with some beers and stopped in to an antique store on our way. We found a very cool, slightly damaged world globe and asked the shopkeeper how much it cost. Speaking no English, this little Italian woman held up four fingers and then a zero. We spent the next five minutes contemplating if we wanted to purchase this globe, inspecting the damage, etc. After we decided to pull the trigger and walked up to the cash register, we were more than a little surprised when she held up a calculator and asked for 400 Euros. If I could read her mind, I'd imagine she was thinking, who do these drunk Americans think they are? In our minds, we couldn't imagine anyone wanting to buy a damaged globe for 400 Euros! Well, if anyone is still contemplating a birthday or Christmas gift for me, I now have high interest in procuring an antique globe.

By the way, the dinner and wine were divine. Interesting how we thought the food and wine would be the saving grace of our trip, and it really ended up being an afterthought. A very delicious afterthought.

On Sunday, we climbed the Duomo stairs and walked around on the rooftops of the cathedral. The architecture was stunning and provided some great photo ops.