Milan

Last night, Amanda and I met at JFK to fly off to Milan. After a very diluted Bloody Mary, in our matching black leggings and Bose headphones, we were on the plane! Unfortunately, the plane was full and vomiting kids in the row behind us. Also, Amanda's audio didn't work, so she couldn't watch the one movie she was excited to see - hopefully they have Hunger Games on the way back! While my audio was very scratchy - the flight was definitely not for the win. After a few apricot juices and several movies, we arrived in Italy! To celebrate, Air Italia gave us these:



Upon arrival, we took the Malpensa Express train to Milano Centrale station which took about 50 minutes. Our hotel, M Gallery by Accor is a few blocks away. After dropping our bags and checking out our room, we headed out as we wanted to enjoy the day as much as possible.

We took the M3 - Yellow train with our unlimited daily ticket from the Centrale station to Duomo, to see the Cathedral, pictured below with the refinished facade:



The Cathedral inside was lovely with a lavish crypt and baptistry that was unearthed through an excavation. Here are a few photos:







After, we opted for the stairs option in lieu of the elevator to get to the top of the Cathedral and see the terraces. This was particularly painful for me as I had gone to an intense gym class yesterday and was still very sore! Amanda hash tagged in her Instagram, we had "jet lagged delusions of our fitness" - but we made it to the top to see these awesome views of the city and get a closer look of the spires:







There was also a sculpture exhibit on top of the roof:



When we returned back to the ground, I was dying for some ice cream, so a friendly Chinese man sold me a hazelnut gelato and Amanda had a caprese sandwich. We then walked through the famous shopping arcade called the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II to the Piazza La Scala where the famous opera house is. Here's a photo of the shopping arcade's glass ceiling:



The 2nd place I wanted to see was Saint Ambrogio church, who is the patron saint of Milan. We took the metro to get there as it started to drizzle - here's a collage of this 4th century church:



By the time we left, the sun was out and we decided to walk down to the canal district called Navigli where on the last Sunday of the month they have an outdoor antique fair. Today it seemed like one massive block party and there appeared to be some canal races as shown here:



We stopped in Taglio for some lattes and this lovely cheese and meat platter to give us some fuel to power through our jet lag!:



We wandered the block party and the crowds of people, then we managed to meander upward to a park. We were exhausted, but knew we probably had to eat before returning to our hotel. So after some research and a little trial and error, we made it to Piazza San Lorenzo, the location of a basilica of the same name and a Roman colonnade, both pictured below:



In the piazza, everybody was enjoying their appertivo, or happy hour, but we were interested in food. However, most restaurants don't get dinner going until much later, so we walked toward the metro and before getting off at our stop, decided to stop in the "Golden Quad" of high-end fashion in Montenapoleone. We quickly saw the many high-end shops that were closed and caught a tram (our unlimited daily ticket of 4.50€ became very useful!), and ended up near our hotel. As we walked toward our hotel in jet lagged exhaustion, we decided on Il Javolino which was just across the street from our hotel. Despite their happening vibe upstairs, they seated us downstairs where we had spaghetti and I had the famous Rissotto Milanese, periodically feeling the rumbling of a nearby subway.

We returned to our hotel to cash in our complimentary welcome drinks that led to tasty wines and snacks with a friendly bartender from Lake Como.

We end the night with much needed showers and propping up our feet as we get ready for more walking in Rome tomorrow. Amanda's Fitbit said we walked 22,714 steps - for once I'm not the only one tracking steps!