You know its not a good sign when the native italian person sitting on the train next to you tells you, an american tourist, that milan is one of the worst places to visit in Italy. However, being an american tourist, who has heard brilliant things about how milan is the "fashion capital" of the world, and a "must see" forge on, brushing her words away, and telling yourself that this is, despite the gray skies and train delays and the hostel booking with a safety rating of 70%, going to be an utterly fantastical weekend, full of bright store windows and expensively regretful purchases.
Ahh milan. Milan Milan Milan. So in an effort to save money by only staying one night in Milan, we pre-booked a hostel and headed in the dark early hours of saturday. The train ride in was fairly smooth with no particular issues. We made it into the central station, then walked downstairs to catch the metro. In the midst of locating the metro, craig and i got into a tiff, over lots of little practically nothings, and made the metro ride to our hostel stop as awkward as could be for our friends by shooting angry glares across the seats at each other. Anyway, as usual we were back to happiness by the time we had dropped off our luggage in the hostel, and were soon off to the market outside in the nearest piazza. The market was absolute shit of course, as they sometimes are, with lots of little things my mother would tell me "are tacky and useless." You know, like little statuettes and plastic rings, things like that. Charlotte who was with us, decided to buy some things for her boyfriend... then we all headed off on an afternoon shopping adventure.
I had looked up lots of design stores on my various blogs i follow religiously, and had them all marked on a huge ultra-tourist map. Craig was a total dear and offered to help me find some of them, which was definitely a feat with all the awful side roads milan has. We visited Books Import, which came highly recommended from designsponge, was of course closed, as so many stores so often are in italy. But craig had the sense to ask the man who owned the shop next door (which was frustratingly open) if Books Import was just closed for siesta, which it was, and we found it would open again in an hour. So we spent the hour finding Spazio 900, a very expensive vintage furniture store. Which had lots of beautiful 1920's 1930's style furniture and accessories, all around the price of an apartment in manhattan. So then back to Books Import, which we loved and highly suggest to anyone visiting the area. Rows and rows of art books, design books, sketch books, cook books, and childrens books, all the best kinds with the big pages full of pictures. So then we stopped and got a coffee at a nearby cafe (at a place i thought was cute, but craig suspected was owned by the mafia) and headed back to meet up with the others on our trip at Duomo.
Duomo was gorgeous of course, huge church, with thousands of statues, very famous and romantic. I lit a candle for Grandma hausheer, and craig lit a candle for fun. oh craig. Anyways. then we went birthday shopping for me, at Zara's which was upsettingly unproductive. There was honestly not very much there i liked. yes in milan. But craig got a pretty handsome grey blazer, that fits him pretty well.
Then we all got back on the metro and went down to the canal district Navigli, where there are lots of small pizza tratorias. We sat and got a pizza, walked charlotte back to the metro, then found a bar and got some fairly cheap, hugemongous pitchers of beer. I really wanted a cocktail, but they were super pricy so i settled and sipped from craigs beer glass periodically. Around 11 we headed back to the metro and the hostel, checked for bedbugs, flipped the channels on the first tv we had seen since being in italy, told some bedtime stories, then drifted off to sleep.
The next morning was pretty uneventful, more shopping all around, although i didn't really fall in love with anything enough to bring it home. Craig and i found a really delightful bakery, where i got a piece of quiche and a piece of crustless cheese cake... and also a cream puff which i ended up donating to craig. haha i am such a fatie. anyways so then we all met back at the central station for the trip home...
which was the most memorable part of the trip by far. Im not blogging about that until i andrew puts up his pictures though, otherwise you probably wouldn't believe the story...
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