I got off the train two days ago around 9 in the evening to a large, dark station in central Milan. I was wearing a spring jacket over a light, zip up sweatshirt and a scarf. As soon as I stepped onto the platform I was met with a wave of mild, moist air and I instantly began to sweat. Even in the dark of evening did the humidity hang in the tepid air of the train station. I don’t normally like humid weather but the moisture that met my skin after months of dry, icy conditions was very welcome.
I wandered my way through the large train station, announcements were made in Italian announcing the arrival and departure of trains (Italian is a very attractive language, even from train announcement robot women), and I made my way down to the lower depths of Centralle to the metro station. The hostel was pretty easy to find and unlike Hamburg, I had done my homework and prepared some maps on my iphone. The hostel was located on a very quiet street in a residential neighborhood in northern Milan. I made a short walk from the metro station through dense alleyways with high building fronts dotted with windows and balconies with overhanging vines and flowers. Every single building looked as if it had been there since ancient Rome. I walked through an entryway that led to a gated courtyard where my hostel was located. I was buzzed into the front door and I made my way up the steps to reception.
The hostel was located across several apartments on two floors of this building. Everything looked old and authentic but the place had the dank grittiness of a very cheap hostel. The reception was crowded with people complaining about whatever in broken english to the single hostel employee behind the counter. I waited about 20 minutes for my turn. Eventually I checked in, settled into my zoo of a dorm room, and went up to the kitchen to skype. I’ll now backfill you on some decision making on my part prior to my arrival to this hostel. Milan is hosting a special design and fashion week, one it holds annually and is world famous, and so all the prices in all the city’s hostels and hotels have spiked significantly. So much so that I considered skipping Milan altogether because of the dent in my travel funds that it would have created. This hostel though maintained a reasonable price even after it had been hiked. But I had to cope with its 50% satisfaction rating that it received on hostel booking websites, which is pretty low. So I kind of knew this place was going to be gritty, no big deal. Exhausted from the trek and late arrival, I crashed for the night.
I had made plans ahead of time to meet up with Pietro Zonca, a friend of my family that we had known from home. The Zonca family moved from Milan to Burlington for a few years for work and now are back in Milan. Pietro had graciously taken the day off to show me around the city and we were meeting out in front of the hostel at 10 in the morning. It had taken me some time after waking to get my affairs in order. The reception guy was pretty useless. I tried to reserve another night but he said there was no guarantee for a bed as if there was no way he could check whether they were booked or not. This place was kind of a mess. So I left my bags at reception, assuming I would come back in the evening to check in again and stay another night. And I was starving and it was close to 10 so I quickly left the hostel and made my way towards a small market shop nearby. It was gloriously sunny, the sky was blue, and it was very warm. All the annoyances from reception were quickly wiped from my mood and I pretty much skipped down the street towards the shop. The shop was a pretty traditional Italian one (although I guess they all are) and I bought a package of taralli con peperoncino (like cracker circles baked in a spicy pepperoni oil) and a large bottle of Pellegrino for a combined total 1 euro 50. These items would go for much, much more in the North End at home. Then I walked back towards the hostel’s courtyard entrance to meet up with Pietro, munching on my taralli. Pietro arrived a few minutes later.
Pietro is a short, well dressed Italian man in his 50’s, very smart, and bursting with happiness and excitement. It was really good to see him again. The last time we had met I was much shorter. We started walking towards the city center, it wasn’t too far from my neighborhood, and we caught up awhile, chatting as we walked. We took the scenic route along Corso Buenos Aires, one of Milan’s famous shopping streets. Milan, along with New York and Paris, is one of the premier cities for high end fashion and luxury and this is plain to see when you see all the people walking around and how they are dressed. Everyone from children to the elderly were dressed in fine clothes, clad in black or gray or other muted colors. Pietro was explaining to me that Italians consider black as elegance and so most of Italian fashion lacks color. And despite the mild weather, most people wore coats and scarves (although I could have walked around shirtless the weather was so nice). We passed high end shops like Gucci and Louis Vuitton and Miu Miu and all the others. We passed squares and plazas all bustling with crowds and people sitting on benches, chatting in the sun. We passed by one plaza where Pietro explained to me they displayed Mussolini’s dead body after he was killed following the war.
As we walked, Pietro talked a lot about Italy’s troubled past, its current economic woes, and why Burlesconi and the current political figures are troubling for the country’s future. It was really interesting to listen to him talk. But eventually all the political discourse gave way to a desire for coffee. I was all too eager to try my first Italian espresso and Pietro, he explained to me, is a coffee addict, so we ducked into the first coffee bar we saw. This and all coffee bars in Italy are unlike all others that I have been to in the world. And I too am a coffee addict and have lived in such places as Seattle, so I’ve seen my fair share of coffee shops. These bars are very small, have only a few high tables for standing, and most people order and drink from the bar. There are usually just one or two well dressed barristas and the menus are always the same and are very short and to the point. Long gone are the hip cafes of Berlin and Scandinavia. These bars are all about the coffee. We ordered two coffees, which are espressos in Italy, and come in very small coffee cups that look more like tea cups, and only include the smallest volume of liquid. You wonder what’s the point and then realize after sipping that the intense flavor of coffee only requires a small amount. And the espresso was by far the best coffee I had ever tasted. I added a bit of sugar and it was perfect. The culture dictates that you go to the bar, order an espresso, pay your euro, sip the espresso, and leave the bar. Quick and easy and wholly satisfying. But for good measure I tried one of the pastries as well, a cream filled Italian pastry. Molto bene!
Then we walked a bit further to Plaza de duomo, the city’s central plaza and home to Milan’s main attraction, its massive cathedral. The cathedral soars high into the sky and looks a bit like the castle at Disneyworld. It’s made entirely of marble and contains over 1600 unique statues along its exterior. Hundreds of individual spires shoot into the sky and as we walked closer, we could see glimpses of its beauty through the dense cover of lower level buildings with red roof tiles and stucco siding. The plaza itself is huge and thousands of people gathered in it to lounge in the sun. The place was teeming with activity. We bought the entrance tickets to climb one of its towers to the cathedral’s roof where we could get views of Milan’s skyline. Milan doesn’t have many tall buildings and the cathedral itself is so tall that we got a full 360 degree view of the sea of buildings below that extended out to the plains in the distance. The buildings below were a beautifully monotonous sea of red tiles and easter color stucco walls. Each rooftop had a balcony with a garden and old women watering plants. It was everything you would hope the Milano skyline would look like.
After gazing awhile at the dreamy skyline we climbed back down to meet up with Alex, Pietro’s son, in the plaza. The last time I saw Alex I think he was 12ish and now he’s 22, so a bit different. Alex speaks English very fluently and with an American accent, having learned it from scratch in Massachusetts. He now studies three dimensional computer animation at a design school in the city. The three of us continued to walk around the central area of Milan. We got gelato, the Italian version of ice cream, a smoother, creamier version - truly excellent stuff. We stopped off at the local Lomography shop so that I could get my camera looked at (I had a small problem with the mechanics of the camera but they fixed it post haste!) and then we went back into the duomo to take a look at the inside of the cathedral, free of charge.
The duomo looks big from the outside because it is big from the outside. But there are lots of buildings that look big from the outside and then you go in them and they look normal because the insides are divvied up into separated rooms. You kind of assume that the duomo is the same. But then you go inside and realize that there is exaclty one room in the duomo and that the entire building is completely hollow. I’ve never seen a bigger interior space. It’s not easy to describe but you walk in and your jaw drops a little as you gaze at the sheer space. And of course it is beautiful too. We wandered around the cathedral for awhile, slipped down in to the crypt, and then exited back out to the plaza. I left Pietro and Alex for a couple of hours as they went to get their teeth cleaned (an appointment they had made a long time ago) and I went to go buy some spring shoes to replace my inappropriately heavy winter boots.
I met up with Alex a few hours later and we went to a neighborhood in the southern part of Milan, not far from the Zoncas’ home, to meet up with Alex’s Parisian girlfriend by a canal famous for its nightlife, bars and cafes. The three of us then met up with Pietro and Anna (Mrs. Zonca) and we all went out to a very nice pizzeria for a late dinner. Pizzerias are actually relatively fancy restaurants in Italy. They serve pizzas of course but also regular Italian cuisine. I ordered a flattened pasta over a fish sauce with olives and capers, an excellent meal, and we shared a white wine, and finished with a dessert of tiramisu. The meal was fantastic. And afterwards, learning of my hostel woes, the Zonca family invited me to stay with them in their apartment nearby which was overwhelmingly gracious of them. I gladly accepted the offer and went back to the hostel to pick up my bags and return to the apartment. It didn’t take long to fall asleep afterward.
The next day I would be spending with Alex, Pietro and Anna both had to work pretty early. But the Zonca family had a surprise for me for the next day and you’ll have to find out what that is in the next post (which will be soon because I’m already getting behind...)
See you then!
I wandered my way through the large train station, announcements were made in Italian announcing the arrival and departure of trains (Italian is a very attractive language, even from train announcement robot women), and I made my way down to the lower depths of Centralle to the metro station. The hostel was pretty easy to find and unlike Hamburg, I had done my homework and prepared some maps on my iphone. The hostel was located on a very quiet street in a residential neighborhood in northern Milan. I made a short walk from the metro station through dense alleyways with high building fronts dotted with windows and balconies with overhanging vines and flowers. Every single building looked as if it had been there since ancient Rome. I walked through an entryway that led to a gated courtyard where my hostel was located. I was buzzed into the front door and I made my way up the steps to reception.
The hostel was located across several apartments on two floors of this building. Everything looked old and authentic but the place had the dank grittiness of a very cheap hostel. The reception was crowded with people complaining about whatever in broken english to the single hostel employee behind the counter. I waited about 20 minutes for my turn. Eventually I checked in, settled into my zoo of a dorm room, and went up to the kitchen to skype. I’ll now backfill you on some decision making on my part prior to my arrival to this hostel. Milan is hosting a special design and fashion week, one it holds annually and is world famous, and so all the prices in all the city’s hostels and hotels have spiked significantly. So much so that I considered skipping Milan altogether because of the dent in my travel funds that it would have created. This hostel though maintained a reasonable price even after it had been hiked. But I had to cope with its 50% satisfaction rating that it received on hostel booking websites, which is pretty low. So I kind of knew this place was going to be gritty, no big deal. Exhausted from the trek and late arrival, I crashed for the night.
I had made plans ahead of time to meet up with Pietro Zonca, a friend of my family that we had known from home. The Zonca family moved from Milan to Burlington for a few years for work and now are back in Milan. Pietro had graciously taken the day off to show me around the city and we were meeting out in front of the hostel at 10 in the morning. It had taken me some time after waking to get my affairs in order. The reception guy was pretty useless. I tried to reserve another night but he said there was no guarantee for a bed as if there was no way he could check whether they were booked or not. This place was kind of a mess. So I left my bags at reception, assuming I would come back in the evening to check in again and stay another night. And I was starving and it was close to 10 so I quickly left the hostel and made my way towards a small market shop nearby. It was gloriously sunny, the sky was blue, and it was very warm. All the annoyances from reception were quickly wiped from my mood and I pretty much skipped down the street towards the shop. The shop was a pretty traditional Italian one (although I guess they all are) and I bought a package of taralli con peperoncino (like cracker circles baked in a spicy pepperoni oil) and a large bottle of Pellegrino for a combined total 1 euro 50. These items would go for much, much more in the North End at home. Then I walked back towards the hostel’s courtyard entrance to meet up with Pietro, munching on my taralli. Pietro arrived a few minutes later.
Pietro is a short, well dressed Italian man in his 50’s, very smart, and bursting with happiness and excitement. It was really good to see him again. The last time we had met I was much shorter. We started walking towards the city center, it wasn’t too far from my neighborhood, and we caught up awhile, chatting as we walked. We took the scenic route along Corso Buenos Aires, one of Milan’s famous shopping streets. Milan, along with New York and Paris, is one of the premier cities for high end fashion and luxury and this is plain to see when you see all the people walking around and how they are dressed. Everyone from children to the elderly were dressed in fine clothes, clad in black or gray or other muted colors. Pietro was explaining to me that Italians consider black as elegance and so most of Italian fashion lacks color. And despite the mild weather, most people wore coats and scarves (although I could have walked around shirtless the weather was so nice). We passed high end shops like Gucci and Louis Vuitton and Miu Miu and all the others. We passed squares and plazas all bustling with crowds and people sitting on benches, chatting in the sun. We passed by one plaza where Pietro explained to me they displayed Mussolini’s dead body after he was killed following the war.
As we walked, Pietro talked a lot about Italy’s troubled past, its current economic woes, and why Burlesconi and the current political figures are troubling for the country’s future. It was really interesting to listen to him talk. But eventually all the political discourse gave way to a desire for coffee. I was all too eager to try my first Italian espresso and Pietro, he explained to me, is a coffee addict, so we ducked into the first coffee bar we saw. This and all coffee bars in Italy are unlike all others that I have been to in the world. And I too am a coffee addict and have lived in such places as Seattle, so I’ve seen my fair share of coffee shops. These bars are very small, have only a few high tables for standing, and most people order and drink from the bar. There are usually just one or two well dressed barristas and the menus are always the same and are very short and to the point. Long gone are the hip cafes of Berlin and Scandinavia. These bars are all about the coffee. We ordered two coffees, which are espressos in Italy, and come in very small coffee cups that look more like tea cups, and only include the smallest volume of liquid. You wonder what’s the point and then realize after sipping that the intense flavor of coffee only requires a small amount. And the espresso was by far the best coffee I had ever tasted. I added a bit of sugar and it was perfect. The culture dictates that you go to the bar, order an espresso, pay your euro, sip the espresso, and leave the bar. Quick and easy and wholly satisfying. But for good measure I tried one of the pastries as well, a cream filled Italian pastry. Molto bene!
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| One Italian pastry, one Italian cappuccino, and two espressos |
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| Pietro, my friend and guide through Milan |
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| A typical side alley off of the main shopping street of Corso Buenos Aires |
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| We had a snack of dough stuffed with mozzarella and tomatoes here |
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| The duomo, Milan's central cathedral |
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| The duomo is made up of hundreds of these spires topped by unique statues |
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| Me spinning three times on a bull's balls, a local tradition that means you are destined to return |
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| We got gelato here, mine of mint, Jamaican rum, and cream |
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| The canal in the south of Milan, a popular area for locals |
The next day I would be spending with Alex, Pietro and Anna both had to work pretty early. But the Zonca family had a surprise for me for the next day and you’ll have to find out what that is in the next post (which will be soon because I’m already getting behind...)
See you then!
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