from American Airlines flight No. 199, en route to New York from Milan.
We ended our Italian trip with a four day stay in Italy’s fashion and business center, Milano. You'll remember that we began our sojourn two weeks ago on November 2nd, landing in Milan’s Malpensa airport and then immediately boarding a plane for Palermo on Sicily. We joined our friends, Ellen and Brian in sharing a rental apartment in the ancient town of Modica in southeast Sicily - this trip was to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. After spending a week with them, Stacey and I drove off of Sicily and onto the Italy's mainland where we drove from the her toe to her heel; i.e. the region of Puglia. Though small in area, Italy has a wide diversity of culture and geography and we were able to savor a few of them with great delight over the course of two weeks.
What can we say about Milan? We loved it. Coming from New York, we felt very much at home in this great Italian metropolis. For sure, there are vast differences. New York is tall and vertical. Milan is decidedly low-rise. And New York is not very old and changing its skyline almost daily it seems. Milan has been around a long time and even though it suffered much destruction from Allied bombs during World War II, it still feels and looks like an old, if not ancient, European city. New York City, and Manhattan in particular, are laid out on a grid. Not so Milan, whose streets emanate from Il Duomo in concentric fashion and then become a mumble-jumble of chaotic confusion where the name of a street changes at a whim as you travel along it.
But what really ingratiated itself to us was the electricity and rhythm - the vibrant buzz of the city. Milano is so alive! People are out and about, on foot, on bike or scooter, in the trams and buses and yes, alas, in their cars that clog the streets and foul the air. Italians do love their cars but at least they sip gas rather than devour it as do ours.
This is decidedly not a city of the working class. Milan is a bourgeois town and it's decorated with the iconography that announces it: the stock market is here and it is the banking and business center of the country. Here is the Quadrilatero della moda high-fashion district with the retail temples of Versace, Chanel, Fiorucci, Prada and Dolce and Gabbana. These are the designers for Italy's ruling class with prices that only the very wealthy can afford. Progessive politics is not very evident here - no graffiti demanding peace or victory for working people - as it might be in other Italian cities where the Left is stronger. No, this is the city of Berlusconi and his far-right partner, Fini (the former’s brother owns the major newspaper and Berlusconi, of course, owns virtually all the broadcast media throughout the country).
But it is also the most ethnically diverse city in Italy - with many Chinese and other Asians, Africans and Arabs evident in the neighborhoods that we walked through. As such, Milan has a more cosmopolitan and international feel than other Italian cities we’ve been to on this trip and before. It has an eclectic architecture - due to the devastation of the war - with an elegant mix of 19th and 20th century buildings. The apartment houses downtown, evidently home to wealthier Milanos, are elegant and substantial with their carved stone facades, corbelled terraces and grand doorways. The palazzi of former royalty surround Il Duomo and inform us that this is a neighborhood of the very rich and powerful.
Because it’s the center of design and fashion, the Milanese dress accordingly. We never saw a t-shirt on a man in a restaurant. Always, a buttoned shirt and a sweater as a minimum. More often, jackets and ties. Rarely jeans and sneakers.Women, too, are dressed formally and fashionably The retail shops, and particularly the clothing stores, are very avant, showing off their wares as if they were works of art. And food? Every few feet, another eating establishment - pizzeria, bar, café, ristorante, osteria, salumeria, frommageria and so on. Again, oozing luxury and elegantly designed to beckon one within. By the way, we never had a bad coffee in all of Italy - we drank café espresso (which we do at home as well) and it was always excellent, even at a gas station on the autostrada. The same goes for Italian tomatoes which, in every instance, exploded with flavor in their salads, pastas and pizza. The food throughout our trip was always high quality in taste and preparation and I often wondered why that’s not true in our country as well. Mostly, it seems, because small establishments still exist in Italy, throughout the country in small towns and big cities alike, where our cuisine has come to be dominated by the huge fast food chains and all that portends for the food we ingest.
Milan’s transit system is a thing of beauty. We’ve learned that this is true throughout Europe which, by and large, did not destroy their trams and trains in favor of the auto and truck. While we’re paying for that reckless lack of planning at home, Europeans have access to modern mass transit now as they have always had in the past. Our hotel, which was in a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, was very convenient to the centro historico (historical center) via the No. 12 tram which stopped right on our corner. What a delight! It woved its way slowly, but methodically, downtown, passing one interesting neighborhood after another. With our 24-hour billetto (ticket) we were able to hop-on and hop-off as we pleased - and we did, riding and walking and exploring wherever we wanted. Other choices included a subway ride or a bus, part of an extensive system that covers the entire city and beyond to the surrounding metropolitan area.
And bicycles, once again, were in good use. Not, perhaps, nearly as much as in other European cities. But Milanese of all ages and classes use them quite a bit to get around easily; to avoid the traffic jams and to reach areas not serviced by a tram or bus. We saw elderly men and women, hip young women and businessmen in suits with briefcases, all cycling here and there on errands or on their way to work or wherever. The city also provides many locations to rent, very inexpensively, so-called city bikes that can be picked up at one spot and returned to another - a very convenient way to get around. Still, unlike even New York, there are few, if any, bike lanes and the streets are very often paved with large cobblestones and inlaid with tram rails, making, it seemed to me, a somewhat hazardous place to ride a bike.
We walked – a lot! That may be our saving grace as we ate much more than we are accustomed to. We must have walked quite a few miles each day that we were in Milano. From the Duomo to the Poldi Pezzoli museum; from the Centro to the Coin department store a while away; from one side of Parco Sempione to a hip bar scene near the Arca della Pace on the park’s other end – we walked and walked and walked. At the end of each day, yes - we were tired!
So, we loved Milan - even with our critical outlook of its fashion, banking and business demeanor. We love cities and the social cooperation that they foster and so we loved Milano for its city-ness; we loved it for its vibrancy, its big city feel, its elegance and for its people who, like people everywhere, were friendly and always willing to give directions and advice when asked by a tourist in need. We’d return again without hesitation.
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Now for some highlights, in words and pictures of our four days in Milan. By the time you read this, we will be back in Brooklyn - the joy of travel and our Italian trip will soon become a memory. One reason for writing about our travel is to commit our experience to paper something a bit more firm than my fleeting memory. This serves my purpose but I hope you’ve enjoyed reading, and travelling, along with us as well.
Buon giorno e ariverderci! Ciao, ciao! - Matteo
Day 1, Friday -
We arrived from Bari by plane to Milan’s Malpensa airport and rode into town and our hotel on the Malpensa Express - a train ride to Milan’s center. Our hotel, however, was not downtown - that kept expenses within reason since Milan is one of the ten most expensive cities in the world and Italy’s most expensive. We debarked the train at the Bovisa station, couldn’t find a taxi easily so we walked to the hotel - a big, and very tiring, mistake. We reached our hotel, luggage in tow, some 40 minutes later. That might have been easier a few years ago.
After a long nap, we ventured downtown, catching the No. 12 tram on our corner. It took us to the historic center and Milan’s marvelous cathedral: Il Duomo.
Remember that you can click on any photo to see it clearer and larger.
Click any photo to see it larger.
We walked around the Duomo and La Scala plazas and then started off, following the GPS-Google map on my Blackberry. Our destination was about a mile away - Ristorante Maruzella. We would meet up with our friends Ellen and Brian who we had spent almost a week with on Sicily earlier in our trip, This was our first night in Milan but their last - they were flying back to Washington the next day.
Day 2, Saturday -
We again rode downtown, getting of the tram and walking through some neighborhoods near the Piccolo Theater. The streets were abuzz with people out and about for the weekend. Flea markets were here and there and the shops were open and beckoning buyers with beautiful displays of their wares - clothing, knicknacks, furniture and, always, food, food, food.
Press PLAY for a Milano street scene video.
We walked until we reached Il Duomo and took in its grace and majesty again - this time in a gray daylight (it’s rainy season in Italy). It’s an amazing work of art, begun in the 1300's and not completed until the 1960's! As such, it’s quite an amalgam of different eras and architectures and architecturally controversial in that regard. What do we know -- to us, it just seemed magical.
Click to see larger & clearer.
We left the Duomo and walked north to the Brera district with its restaurants, shops and hi-fashion streets. We were hungry. Our hotel did not include breakfast so we were searching out a tourbook recommended eatery: Obiká, billed as the world’s first mozzarella bar. On Saturday they offered a buffet and it was fabulous. Along with four or five different mozzarellas made from the much-praised and admired milk of the buffalo, there was Italian salami and prociutto, arugola and tomato salads, potatoes (yes, potatoes - which were on the menu in virtually every restaurant we ate in throughout Italy - fried or roasted), pasta, soup and lots of pastries and fruit for desert.
We headed back to the hotel and rested - we’ve discovered that travelling at 62 and 64 is not as easy as it used to be. However, that night we tried to recapture our youth by heading to one of the city’s hip bar areas where large portions of free aperativi are served along with your drinks - but, after a long walk along Parco Sempione to the Arca della Pace, we found the hip places there too young, too crowded, too smoky (oh boy! do they smoke!) and too noisy for our squarer tastes. It was quite late already - about 10:30 - when we finally found a quieter and very lovely place, the Ristorante de Nuova Arena, just off the park and we shared a delicious pizza and salad and then made our way back to the hotel, not with the greatest of ease - it was late and the trams were on a reduced Saturday night schedule, so we waited and waited and ... it finally did arrive. An adventure for sure.
5782 Stacey on an old No. 12 tram. Charming.
Day 3, Sunday -
It was a drizzly, gray day but surprisingly mild in the mid 50s. Because of the rain we decided to take in one of Milan’s museums and we headed to the Poldi Pezzoli, east of Il Duomo. The museum was named after a wealthy and royal collector of the 19th century and is housed in his former palazzo. Much of the interior has been renovated to make it more accessible for use as a museum. But some of the groom still have the grandeur and furnishings of the former palazzo. It was a graphic display of the incredible wealth of yesterday’s (and today’s) aristocrati rulers. The museum was presently running an exhibition of the great Italian master, Botticelli and included two of hist most famous works.
Press PLAY to watch Pinnochio play some music in Piazza Cordusio.
After the museum, we perused the famous Quartolateral fashion district, so-named because its rectangle is defined by four thoroughfares. Here were the big names of fashion, in shops that oozed the extravagant and avant garde designs that have made Milan one of the centers of fashion and design.
After our walk through fashionista alley we headed, via subway this time, to a neighborhood southwest of the Duomo - the Navigli. This part of Milan contains the remnants of canals, now drained and no-longer used, that were designed by Leonardo DaVinci to enhance commerce in the city. The neighborhood is one of the city’s new, young and hip areas, filled with bars, cafes and shops. That reminded us of New York which, it seems, constantly reinvents itself with new, vibrant neighborhoods. At the same time, we wondered if the same process of gentrification in our neighborhoods that displaces poor residents with new, well-heeled ones is at work in Milan and concluded that it probably is.
Having not fared so well the previous evening, searching for Milan’s aperativi during their version of happy hour, we were willing to try again at a bar touted for the some of the best (free) appetizers in town. And we found them at Le Biciclette (The Bicycles), a very modern bar, decorated with bicycles and bicycle wheels. The place was empty at 6:30 when we showed up. The crowds don’t show up until 7:30 or so and these places, as we had learned the night before, get really hot and packed at eight or nine and into the wee hours.
Day 4, Sunday -
This was our lazy day and our last day in Milan. It rained, fairly hard and steadily, most of the day. We had to pick up a few more gifts for our grandchildren so Stacey suggested we visit an Italian department store and our No. 12 tram would take us all the way there without any switching and standing in the rain waiting for the next one to come along. We were going to check out the Coin (Cohen’s) department store, a ubiquitous Italian chain. We took the tram to striking distance and then got off because, again, the neighborhood looked interesting and we still had the explorer itch in us. We walked several blocks and came across the Camera Dei Lavori Milanese - it was the headquarters for one of the trade union confederations in the city. Just around the corner was a pizzeria that was crowded with people - usually a good sign - and we entered the Ristorante Porta Vittoria. The joint was filled with people from the union hall and the staff was friendly and welcoming. The food was also welcoming - very! We shared another pizza and a plate of risoto ai porcini e branzino. Wonderful on both counts. A cute waitress tried out her English on us and I tried out my Italian - her attempts were much better than mine.
We thought that that would be it for food on our last day and went back to the hotel and a long rest. But we’ve found out that the more you heat the hungrier you get. Why? So I fired up the laptop and Googled our hotel and searched the environs for a restaurant. The hotel staff had told us that there were none since we were in a residential neighborhood. But how wrong they were! We had dinner at L’imagine Bistrot, just a few minutes walk away, and what a treat that was! First, the effusive welcome when we walked in and then at our table with clementines and oranges, wonderful crusty bread and marinated sun-dried tomatoes that the owner had prepared. Next two glasses of sparkling prosecco were brought to the table. After the risotto for lunch, Stacey decided she had to have a bit more, so we ordered the Milanese version which adds saffron to the mix - Oh -- So good! This was a meat restaurant so I ordered the tagliata di bisteca - tender and tasty steak cut in strips with an arugala salad and the omnipresent roast potatoes on the side. Great also. “No desert please” I demurred. So they sent a bottle of limoncello, cookies and a dish of peanuts and almonds to the table instead. Then, as we parted company, the young owner insisted that we have a glass of grappa with him ... which we did. Then we sort of staggered the few blocks back to our hotel. It was a memorable night out, and perhaps the best dinner of our trip, though that’s hard to say, food in Italy being so good..
Day 5, Tuesday -
Today we rose early at 5:30, brought our luggage to the lobby and called a cab which came promptly. We asked to be brought to the Bovisa station where we’d catch the Malpensa Express train to the airport. But the driver promptly informed us, in broken English, that the train was not running due to electrical problems. He could drive us the 30 miles to the airport for the fixed fee of 85 Euros. My New York City antennae went up - were we being scammed? He seemed so nice and genuine. But when he said he would cut the fare to 80 Euro I knew we were being had. “No, just take us to Bovisa station and then wait for us,” I told him. Stacey went inside to find out the status of the train. Sure enough, it was running. There were no problems. It was a sad little coda to an otherwise wonderful few days in Milan. There’s always one bad apple.
This was Stacey’s fifth trip to Italy and my fourth. We’ll probably come back again - it has the perfect blend of ingredients that make travelling so rewarding - beautiful scenery, great food, wonderful people. Then again, there is that book: “One Thousand Places To See Before You Die.” Thanks for travelling with us. Until the next time.
- Matteo
To see ALL my Milano photos, simply CLICK HERE.
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