Milan

Around 5 p.m. on Friday, my group of fellow Italy spring breakers and I boarded the first train to Milan of the season. Things went well until around the second to last stop before the French-Italian border, where we stayed stopped for a suspiciously long time. There was eventually an announcement of a thirty or so minute delay due to meteorological conditions from several days prior--whatever that meant. Allison and I trekked to the dining car, where I bought a latte and was given a free sweet bread treat. The train had been scheduled to arrive in Milan around 10 p.m., so with the delay, I needed the caffeine to be able to keep doing work. It was supposed to be ten minutes in between the last two French stops. But every time we started moving again, the train would stop after only a little while, and there would be another announcement that we were stopped on the tracks and to please not open the train doors for your safety. Roughly three hours later, we made it to the last French stop. There, we could see about three or four inches of snow on the ground.

We made it to Milan at about 1 a.m., and I called an Uber. It was 55€ for the van option that fit all four of us and our luggage, but we weren't going to take the métro so late. We found the key box, input the code, and walked a few minutes to the Airbnb. In the foyer, we turned around to take things in--the marble, the red floor runners, the chandeliers--and went left, as the directions had stated. The elevator had wooden doors you had to close by hand and took only one person at a time. I went last and arrived to a conversation about how the apartment number we needed was missing. Eventually, we determined we'd turned right at the foyer because we'd been facing the wrong direction. The second time, I figured it'd be faster to walk up four flights of stairs than to wait for the elevator again. Inside, Allison and Vanessa took the queen bed, Regan took the pullout couch, and I took the couch.

The next morning--or the same morning, really--we headed to the Duomo di Milano for our 8:15 time slot. I would have changed the time so we could sleep longer, but the tickets were unfortunately unchangeable and unrefundable. The cathedral was impressively white and designed with incredible gothic detail. We saw the inside and the (lackluster) crypt, then climbed about 250 steps to the terrace roof. This was the best part of the experience, between the view and the close look at the flying buttresses.

We hadn't really had breakfast, planning to eat after the cathedral. Since the cathedral took longer than expected, we ended up having more of a two-stage brunch. We arrived at the restaurant around 11:30, so we assumed it wasn't time for the lunch menu yet, as they'd given us the breakfast menu. I ordered a sweet ricotta-filled croissant and a macchiato. Croissants in Italy seem to be made with a little orange zest, which isn't bad; I still prefer French croissants. Then, I had a margherita pizza. The crust was very thin in the middle, and everything melted into a mozzarella and marinara mush. It was pretty comparable to French pizza, so I wouldn't say it's better or worse.

After sitting there for a while, we continued to the Duomo museum, which featured old gargoyles, statue models, and other artifacts from the cathedral's long history. Then, we went to the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, an art museum inside an old library. It contained, among other things, an original Da Vinci and the sketch Raphael used for his School of Athens. We returned to the Airbnb for a homemade quesadilla dinner and turned in for an early night.