Milan, Lombardy, one of the larger cities in Italy, is no doubt one of the fashion capitals in the world. It was almost intimidating walking around the streets as practically everyone, including the homeless on the street, was dressed very well!

The city itself, outside of the designer label shops, the Duomo, the Castello Sforzesco and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, didn’t seem to hold too many attractions and in fact we ended up spending only about half a day exploring the city! On our other two days we explored Lake Como and Bergamo – two beatiful areas worthy of a day trip from Milan (especially if the weather is glorious.)

Photos posted here.

The Experience

As I mentioned in the introduction Milan, for me anyway, wasn’t all that interesting as a city in terms of attractions. The bigger ticket items are the Duomo (which is quite beautiful and drew all the crowds), the Last Supper (which we unfortunately didn’t get to see even though I’d tried to book tickets at least a month before hand) and Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II was magnificent and seemed a very popular place to just hang out in the numerous cafes that lined the halls.

On the Friday night we were surprised to see that the square where the Duomo sits was actually hosting the Festival Bar 2007 so the square was heaving and full of energy. I don’t know who were performing but I was too tired to stick around to enjoy it for too long!

The surprising thing about Milan is the amount of graffiti that dirty all the buildings, sidewalks and streets. I don’t remember there being too much rubbish around but I don’t think I would have noticed it because of the graffiti! Having said that there were some enterprising art including these little penguin bollards.

The other areas we explored included the Naviglio Grande which is a canal in Milan. This is kind of like Little Venice in Paddington and there are bars and restaurants lining the canal. Pretty good for nightlife and EXCELLENT if you want to take advantage of the Italian Happy Hour which involves basically cheap drinks and free nibblies. A great way to fill up and save on the costs of dinner if you’re of the mind.

Food-wise I was expecting quite a bit from Milan. I hated the fact that you were forced to pay a cover charge in restaurants supposedly paying for breadsticks and breads that you didn’t necessarily want and that you always had to pay for bottled water. Its a principle thing. The taste of the food was fairly good if not too memorable but I’m not used to main dishes coming only as is (that is with no salad/veges or other unless ordered.) The gelati was stunning and without going into exactly how many I ate over the weekend its fair to say that I sampled quite a few flavours!

We also took the following day trips when we were in Milan:

• Visiting Lake Como. I wasn’t expecting the weather to behave very well over this weekend and BBC had forecast thunderstorms all weekend. Our first day in Milan was supposed to be the best (though it ended up being the worst!) of the weekend so I planned that we’d go check out the Lakes. The Lakes are a very beautiful part of Lombardy and are an easy train ride from Milan. I wish I’d had more time to explore the Lake fully and indulge in some of the activities you could partake in (hiking, sailing, windsurfing for example) but had to settle for a quick visit and a cruise on the lakes to Bellagio. The cruise could have been beautiful but halfway through the journey we seemed to go into this wierd storm where we were being battered by rain and visibility was nil. The crew had to actually stop the boat in the middle of the lake just to let the storm pass us over! It was surreal. Back at Como you can catch a furnicular to get some views back down to the Lakes. The view wasn’t the greatest but its something to do if you have time in between eating gelati. Even though the weather was rubbish I could still appreciate how beautiful Lake Como was.

• Bergamo and Lecco. My tip for visiting Bergamo is make sure you catch the right train! We ended up taking the long cut to Bergamo and this added about 2 hours to our journey (though we did end up squeezing in a visit to Lecco as a result and it gave me time to sun myself at the station (as we waited for the correct train) on what became a gorgeous day. Bergamo actually has two centres: “Città alta” (upper city) and the “Città bassa” (lower city). From the train you can take a bus then furnicular up from the lower to the upper city but the walk through the main street is easy and interesting and only takes about 20 minutes. If you took it really easy you could try and stretch the sights of Bergamo in a day but really it can be done as a half day trip. The fun is in exploring the little streets of Città alta and taking another furnicular up to San Vigilio, a small hilltop settlement which is nice for a stroll.

Overall, I found Milan slightly underwhelming from a tourist perspective but I did find it enjoyable just walking around the streets and exploring. I could see that its probably a very livable city and of course there is no faulting the fashion and donne belle. 🙂