Hotel Melia Milano

Last weekend was so incredible. I agreed to meet my friends John and Meghan in Milan, and the night before I had been talking to Meghan trying to decide on a time and she invited me to spend the weekend with her and her family. I agreed, eager to see another part of Italy and get out of the house for a while, so I left early Saturday morning with a bag of clothes and my toothbrush in hand because I was running a little late for the bus. I ...

... of the Italian coastline and passed thru many towns. Slower than the Madrid-Barcelona train, that went 290km/h! Got off the humid & hot train and stepped into a very chilly Milan (or Milano as the Italians say). It is surprisingly cold here – darn, I sent most of my winter clothes home already...hmmm might have to go shopping.

The hotel I’m staying at is alcheapo at €45 for the night. From Monaco to this hahaha ...

Arrived relatively early and had difficulty finding my hostel but after climbing numerous stairs that I did not need to I finally asked a little old lady who did not know a word of English and I finally got there. Bit of a disappointing place but I shared a room with a couple of Australians. I saw the Duomo which is the largest gothic cathedral in the world, it has armed soldiers at the ...

... going to poll the crowd for my next move. My plan HAD been to go to Lake Como tomorrow. But it's off season and the weather should be in the high 60's so not really 'laying out' temps. I'm sure Lake Como is beautiful but how beautiful? I have a 2-day metro pass so I could also just hang around Milan tomorrow and see more than just the duomo. Or I could move on to Verona or elsewhere. I think I've decided to scrap Prague for a cooking class somewhere in Italy.

Any thoughts?

... were able to interview some of the designers, but most seemed to be busy with buyers. After grabbing a quick bite at a nearby café I was excited to rest on the ride home.

Milano…one of the best experiences of my life!

I'll update you soon,

Siara

... thank god for Thailand and all it's dodgy rip off's!). Missed out on seeing Leonardo Da Vinci's 'The Last Supper' painting, as all the viewing sessions were sold out, but as I mentioned to Tiff at the time, "I'll take Beckham, Ronaldinho, Kaka and Maldini any day over J.C. and all his mates having some reef & beef and a bag of goon". No offence intended. Anyway, caught the metro and made it the ground and picked up the tickets without any issues. Got a ...

... was really nice seeing our grandparents Dangi and Pops who live in Sydney again. They travel around the world a lot like we do, so we saw them before in London and that was really great too. When we settled down we went to a place called Biffis for lunch. It was one of the most expensive meals we have had on this entire trip, and the lunch was really nice. I has gnocchi and Pops had fresh tomatoes. After that we went to a ...

... ages and less about da Vinci and his inventions. There were however some interesting models that had been created using da Vinci's drawings. After spending about an hour in a cafÈ drinking cappuccino we headed to Santa Maria del Grazie, the church containing The Last Supper. When our time arrived we were led into two different airtight antechambers that remove potential pollutants because of the painting's fragility. The fresco itself was much larger than I ...

We got up and ate a nice continental breakfast at the hotel. We rode the metro downtown to the Duomo, which is the big cathedral in the middle of the Milan. We walked from there to the Castel de Milan, which was a big castle. We had lunch at a really good café. I had my first Italian pizza and it was pretty good! We went to the couture shopping district so that the girls could check out the shops for a project ...