2 days in Milano

Our Erasmus adventure started! Maria and I arrived to Milan, where we are spending two days before going to Florence. Milano is beautiful, but not amazing, you have to know Italians to show you the beautiful places, hidden from the tourists.

On our first day we started at the Monumental Cemetery, the biggest and most importante of Lombardia, designed by the architect Carlo Maciachini in 1864 with an eclectic style, mixing the bizantine, the gothic and the romantic styles.

Then, after eating our first pasta in Milan’s China Town – which hasn’t much from chinese -, we walked across Park Sampione in direction of Castello Sforzesco, built by Francesco Sforza, which become Duque of Milan in the 15th century. For me it was weird to cal it a castel, as for me castels are on top of hills, to better protection… at the same time most of them also house a whole city, which isn’t the case of this one.

Finally in the city center we visited the Duomo, the famous cathedral, so beautiful that has a post just about it, you can see it here. Next to it there are the, as famous, Galleries Vittorio Emanuele II. Milan is known as one of the major cities for fashion, but I didn’t really noticed it!

We spent the evening in the neighbourhood of Navigli, known for its water channels and the Aperitivo houses (basically you pay about 8€ for one drink and you can eat all you want from the buffet – which usually has a lot of pasta and pizza and all the italian goodies!).

On the next day we bumped against a tram revisor, when we didn’t have a valid ticket :/ We tried to play stupid but he didn’t believe us and we had to pay a fine… So we learnt from the beginning that italians are not that “portuguese” as we thought…

We walked again through the Galleries to arrive to Quadrilatero d’Oro, the neighbourhood where the expensive stores are. We had lunch at the Public Garden Indro Montanelli – some homem ade sandwiches – and then continued to the Brera district. This day was a day of observation – the architecture, the people, the fashion.

That day we went early home, as we were cooking some portuguese-italian dinner for our couchsurfing hosts and some friends! An amazing way to start our year abroad!