So this past weekend my roommate, Samantha, and I went to Milan, Italy! The trip started off on a little bit of rough patch because Samantha's wallet got stolen on the metro in Valencia to the airport. But, I was able to cover her the whole weekend and she didn't lose anything too valuable, like her passport. She lost money and her debit card but her parents cancelled it and there were no charges; so, that part was good. But it's still a major bummer for her.
Aside from that, and the fact that I spent a little more than I wanted to on transportation and food, the rest of the weekend was great! We flew into the Milan, Bergamo airport and stayed in a town 10 minutes from the airport (because it was cheaper than staying in Milan center). The town name was Stezzano and we thought there might be a few things to do there, but literally the only things in the town besides houses were our hotel, a SMALL train station, a pool, and a super market. So, when we got there Friday morning we went to a town a 4 minute train ride away called Bergamo. It is beautiful there--it's in the foothills of the Alps so the scenery was gorgeous! And, in northern Italy, they actually have seasons, so the leaves were changing colors and it was absolutely beautiful! Anyway, we got to Bergamo and were super hungry at this point, but we wanted a big pasta dish for lunch. So, we walked around the town for an hour and half before we finally found a restaurant. There were plenty of shopping stores, Gelateria's and Pizzeria's but we couldn't seem to find any restaurants except the one we went to. It's ok though because it was worth the walk; I got this risotto with pears and some type of cheese that was melted on it and it was SO good. After we ate, we walked around a lot, just window shopping, etc. We did get some Gelato later--when it Italy, right? By the time we walked back to the train station, it was around 6 so we headed back to our hotel on the train. When we got there, we fell asleep for a few hours and then woke up to have dinner. Our hotel had a really nice restaurant in it that was actually super cheap. So, we both got glasses of wine and more pasta and had gelato again for dessert! Once we enjoyed our dinner, we went to bed since we were getting up early-ish to go to Milan the next day!
When we woke up, we got ready and went to the hotel breakfast, which was FABULOUS. They had so much to choose from, not just toast and coffee--and, it was free! Then, we caught the train from our little Stezzano station to Milan's center station. From there, we walked to the Cathedral in Plaza Duomo. It was a gorgeous cathedral on the outside--we didn't go in because we were both kind of cathedral-ed out. Then, from there we went to the castle and the park behind the castle leading to an arc. It was all really cool. Outdoor touristy things are definitely my favorite and the park behind the castle was full of locals running/kids playing/etc. And, the leaves were changing all over the place in the park so I was happy! For some reason that park looked just like rural South Jersey during Thanksgiving time...it was weird how similar it felt to me. I told my parents this, but maybe that's why lots of Italians go to New Jersey, it looks like the homeland?..
Anyway, from the park we took pictures of the arc on the other side of the park--it was made of white marble, so pretty! From there, we walked back to the center area to get lunch. We ended up finding this place called Replay, and it was delicious. We both got huge pizza's and split a bottle of their home made wine--awesome. It took us a while to eat everything because we wanted to enjoy the food/wine of Italia and relax as we ate :) When we left, we went "shopping" in the main shopping areas. I say "shopping" because I think anything over 30 euro is expensive--so try seeing lowest prices at 100 euro...not possible for this girl. I did end up buying a pair of nice brown leggings that are thick, which I figured would be great for Germany. They were 20 euro so maybe that was a deal? I don't really know. But, either way, we just window shopped and pretended to be rich while walking through some stores. When we finished shopping it was around 4:45 and we were supposed to meet our friends from ISA who were visiting Milan this weekend as well--they just were staying in Milan center--but they got lost on the way to our meeting spot and we can't use our phones in Italy without being charged like crazy, so we didn't end up seeing them. Also, because it was getting dark and we didn't know where the restaurant was that they were planning to go to, we headed back to the train station and then back to Stezzano. This train experience was a little different than before: we bought our tickets for Stezzano and had to change trains in Treviglio like we did on the way to Milan, however, none of the train screens had a train that went to Treviglio or said Treviglio on any of the stops listed for each respective train... So, with 5 minutes before our train was supposed to leave we find a service person who had to look it up for us--thankfully he figured it out and we ran to our train. Crisis averted. On the train, we sat across from an Italian mom and daughter who clearly were talking about us, because the mom put a magazine in front of her face to talk; this was just dumb of her because we definitely don't know Italian so she could have pretended she was talking about the weather and we would not know the difference. Oh well, sorry we are blatant Americans!
When we got back to Stezzano around 7:30-8, we ate dinner at our hotel restaurant. Again, it was good, but as soon as we were done we went to bed because we had to get up at 4:30 AM the next morning to catch our 6:30 flight. We had our hotel book us a taxi for that morning so we took the taxi and then got to the airport with time to spare. As we are arriving to our gate, the McDonalds is just opening. Now, I've only gotten fast food from a McDonald's or Burger Kind twice since my time here, so it's not like this is a common thing for us to do BUT, they had freshly made egg McMuffins and we just couldn't resist.
Our flight back to Valencia was great--as we were flying, we flew over the Alps and they were covered in snow... SO cool. We got back with no problems and got to our house around 9:30, climbed in bed an watched Criminal Minds the rest of the morning! So, all in all it was a great weekend. I definitely like Rome more than Milan, because Rome is an ancient city and I like that more than an industrial city like Milan. I absolutely want to go back to another part of Italy, preferably somewhere like Florence, Venice, and Pisa, but I would also love to go skiing in the Alps!
Look for pictures soon!
