My Italian getaway-Milan

After visiting (and falling in love with) Florence, I hopped on another motor coach and headed excitedly to Milan. I was excited because we would be there during Milan Fashion Week and I was imaging the city being filled with fashionistas and other fashion industry insiders attending shows in a tent much like they do in Bryant Park in New York.

No such luck. Fashion Week in Milan is very low key with the fashion shows being held in tucked away places like lofts and small clubs. I know this because I asked around. So nonetheless, I wanted to get out and enjoy the city of Milan.

The first day we arrived after stopping to do some outlet shopping outside of the city. The outlets were cool and the prices were ok but after the euro to dollar exchange, we really weren't saving that much money. It was cool to go though. If you are in Milan and want to do some shopping, I recommend checking out the outlets.

After we arrived, we decided to check out happy hour. It was really cool, especially since there were good drinks for a reasonable price and pretty good hors devours. Then we went to dinner and I had some of Milan's signature dish; risotto. It was pretty good. We enjoyed eating outside and a bottle of red wine before we headed back to the hotel to get ready for our trip to Venice in the morning (which I will discuss in the next blog). Me and my travel buddies decided not to go to the club with the other ladies. Here is a picture of me in the duomo.

Good times! We also did a walking tour of Milan where our tour guide showed us how the ride the subway (it was a bit confusing and we had to take a commuter train along with the subway) as well as some of the cool stuff to do in Milan. As she showed us around, we came across the first Prada store. I didn't go inside but I did take a picture of it. Like to see it, here it goes:

One day, when I have a Prada checkbook, I will return to the store and shop. Until then, I have this picture for my memories. Well the last day in Milan, we hit the town. We hopped on the commuter train and went into the city to really explore. We had heard that the canals were really cool to visit and had some good restaurants so we made that our first stop (after I found out the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit was sold out, I'm a fan). We went down to the canals but were a bit disappointed. They weren't all that sexy but we found a cute restaurant and I had some pizza with interesting cheese on it. It had a great flavor but wasn't the type of cheese you would immediately associate with pizza. I can't remember the name, though. Here are the canals.

After that, we headed back to the duomo and checked out some of the shops. We also made it a point to enjoy some gelato from this wonderful place called Grom. It was recommended to my travel buddy, Tiffani and it was well worth the recommendation. Plus it was the nicest gelato places that we'd visited. I also highly recommend Grom for anyone that is in Milan and looking to try some gelato. Great place to start. Here's a picture of the menu (in Italian of course.

Grom was lovely and had great gelato. But we were very tired so we hopped on the commuter train to head back to the hotel. We had to get in bed kind of early to be ready for the airport the next day. However, we were hungry when we got back to the hotel and there weren't many places nearby that were open. We did some scouting and after coming up empty, we resigned ourselves to have our last Italian meal be McDonald's in Milan. It was pretty good. I got a chicken sandwich that had a slightly Italian twist and the fries tasted exactly the same. I figured that a trip to McDonald's was a good way to end the trip anyway.

As I sleepily ate the McDonald's in our plush hotel lobby, I felt good about the trip. Everything turned out really good and even though Milan wasn't as fly as I thought, it is still a city I'd visit again.