Level 2-1: Milan

In a week where The Chaser's wedding coverage was killed, before Chas Licciardello's alter-ego was as well, it's nice to be back to the normality of work life. Goodness knows what would've happened if I was still in Italy - more on that in a second - with absolutely no knowledge of Italian. Spent a whole day of my holiday on CNN, I expect. 

Still, that is not what occurred, so I actually spent my holidays doing things. Caitlin, Janet, Yve and I went on a whirlwind tour of Italy to Milan, Venice and Rome; I went on to Florence and Pisa by myself while the others met Aisling, Georgie and Rose in Turkey for a tour including the ANZAC Day dawn service at Gallipoli. It was good. Fun times were had. I will now tell you about them in a manner which will make you envious of my experiences and talent.

Friday 8th

We left Godstowe at 1:10am. The plan was to get to Milan early, and have the whole day there. In order to best facilitate this, the others went to sleep at about 10 so they would be able to function. I stayed up with Rose and watched Friends on VHS. Several hours later, we boarded a plane and went to Italy, at which point I fell asleep and missed going over the Alps.

We didn't have much of a plan for the first day. We left our bags at the hostel and with some help from the hostel people found the supermarket nearby, as well as a pharmacy to buy ridiculously expensive SPF 50+ sunscreen, to help me work on my tan. We were a bit out from the city centre so it wasn't difficult to find a park and sit down for lunch.

Yve practices her modelling in the fashion capital of Italy.

Lunch was salad, brie and edam held together in a quarter of a giant bread-donut-bagel thing. Yve bought raspberries as well, which were allegedly quite nice, as were the olives which the others shared.

Janet found the container the olives were in equally as delicious.

Having finished our leisurely lunch and with an hour and a half before check-in, we set out to find the Duomo, one of the main tourist attractions in Milan (and certainly the cheapest). After following traffic signs around for an hour and a half, we managed to complete our quest. You'd think the world's largest Gothic cathedral would be easier to spot.

It really is quite large.

With no visible line to enter the building, we stumbled right on in. They didn't have any restrictions on taking photos - something we found by the end of our trip was quite rare.

Did I mention it was the largest Gothic cathedral in the world?

Yeah, my camera just makes things look really pretty - it was much worse in person, trust me. Not beautiful at all.

After we made our way around the whole building, we managed to notice something we'd walked right past on our way to the Duomo - the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II mall.

You're in trouble if buildings like this are overshadowed.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the world's most sophisticated McDonald's.

I still like Melbourne Central more. </homesickness>

Incidentally, you may have spotted something in the bottom left of that last picture. Two things about that: one, why were you not looking at the beautiful buildings with frescos and everything; and two, why yes, that is indeed a jet for sale.

It wasn't just there to look pretty. They had info signs up and everything telling me how good it was and how I should consider it for my next private jet purchase. I figured that people who were looking for a new private jet wold probably go to their local jet dealership, but hey, what do I know? I lived out of a backpack for three weeks.

We fought our way through the throng of people and made it to the other end of the mall, which had a small park with souvenir stalls and a statue of Galileo. They were putting decorations around it, possibly for Easter. I bought a badge which said "Italy" (thus freeing myself from the commitment of buying one in every city we went to). I was starting to fall asleep on my feet again, so by the time we made it back to the train I was practically a zombie. Had a nap, then went out to a nice restaurant down the road from the supermarket and had nice pasta and nicer raspberries. All of us were pretty much dead by the time we got back to the hostel - but still alert enough to be excited for our free breakfast tomorrow.

Saturday 9th

So our excitement the day before paid off.

This picture cannot capture just how delicious and amazing this was.

After our exciting and pre-paid meal we set out to find a local market. We found it without a lot of difficulty, and after walking through the fruit and veggie section we found the clothes, bags and jewellery we were looking for. The first place we stumbled upon had a tub with a bunch of rings for one Euro each, most of which were ridiculously massive and wouldn't fit anyone, but we found matching ones and bought one each - one more and we can call Captain Planet. I bought a dress for €15, which seemed like a lot until we walked around all the designer stores that afternoon and saw hardly anything with less than three digits in the price tag. Yve and Janet also found matching backpacks. Our shopping completed, we continued along the road in the hopes of finding a nearby canal. Because when in Milan, do what you would in Venice.

Alright, so it's not quite Venice.

After our trek down the road it was off to the Duomo again, this time to climb to the top. You could pay three euros extra to take the lift to the top, but we were quite happy to go up the steps, as was the little Spanish boy in front of us counting each one. It was a long way up (strangely enough, being the largest Gothic cathedral in the world). This is what we were rewarded with.

This isn't even the top yet. There were another 80 steps to go.

Because even statues enjoy pretending to be turkeys.

I think everyone understands now that this building is very tall.

Restoration work includes correcting statues' scoliosis.

We spent a long time on the roof, lying in the sun. Caitlin got a phone call telling her that she was a godmother - so now I know who to go to if I need someone "taken care of". I promised to buy her fairy wings and a magic wand - unfortunately these items may be the only things which PoundWorld doesn't sell so I will need to go searching for them. It's times like these that I really miss the Reject shop.

Lunch was two pizzas divided between us - I'm not going to mention food from now on, I'll probably put it all in a separate post as I took photos of nearly everything I ate - made by a guy who actually looked like Super Mario. Seriously, imagine a stereotypical Italian pizza-making guy, and that is what he looked like. Yve bought a Milan University T-Shirt from a nearby souvenir shop, and then we headed over there in order to justify it. A grassy area called to us, so we sat there for a while to take stock of everything.

As you can see, I was already working on my tan.

With another few hours of daylight left, we decided to head off to another corner of the city, to check out all the aforementioned designer clothing stores. Now, I know that when I'm ridiculously famous and wealthy designers will just give me things to wear, but I'm pretty sure that I couldn't justify spending over 400 euros (or pounds... or dollars...) on a piece of clothing. Eventually we were ready to return to the hostel, went to the supermarket and bought a box of fresh peas for dinner.

Hey, at least we were eating greens.

Sunday 10th

The morning brought heartbreak as we realised we wouldn't be having any more breakfasts. Leaving in the morning we took a train to Castello Sforzesco, a fort with 12 different museum exhibits, ranging from musical instruments and ceramics to Michelangelo sketches and photo galleries. To be fair, the Michelangelo exhibit cost extra - or would've, if they hadn't set everything up weirdly so that the only exit was through it. The security guard waved us in and we had a nice time looking at planning sketches, studies and other things we shouldn't have. By the end of the day we also got to see musical instruments, ancient art, ceramics, religious iconography, furniture, and artefacts from Japan, China and Thailand. Not bad, huh?

This was the sort of thing we saw. Just translate this level of awesome to all the other subjects and you will have a vague understanding of what we saw, in that you will have no idea what we saw.

With the Milan Marathon underway outside the castle, we walked out the opposite side to sit in the gardens nearby. Janet had left several minutes before us as we unsuccessfully tried to locate the other exhibitions. We rang her so we could find her again, dragging her away from her spot in the sun surrounded by attractive Italian guys - sorry Janet!

We returned to the hostel quite early - we were catching a very early train to Venice, and needed to wake up at 4:30 in the morning in order to make it. With some slight panic and desperation over the fact that trains don't run until 6:30am in Milan, we found that there was a local bus service which would get us there on time.

My (very basic) knowledge of Latin came in handy when we needed to work out whether to take the Circle Bus (Left) or Circle Bus (Right) - which in Italian is Sinestra and Destra. Interesting language lesson of the day: the Latin for "left" is the root word for the English "sinister", because left-handed people were just so evil and demonic and whatnot. Or maybe they still are - Tony Abbott, Justin Bieber, the writer of this blog... not great examples of human beings, huh? (As are Barack Obama, Tina Fey and Paul McCartney... just for balance.) Interestingly, the overlap between "right" and "correct" occurs in many different languages, including Hungarian and... okay, you're all asleep. Sorry.

And with that, our time in Milan was up, and it was time to board our train and head to Venice... which will be covered in my next blog post. It'll be done in two years by Christmas as soon as possible... until then, channel all your envy into something constructive, like painting or making 200:1 scale accurate models of the Titanic out of Paddle Pop sticks. Whatever works for you. Cíao!