The Roaming Numeral

While I try to experience traveling and new locations with a positive attitude, I have to say the my experience in Milan was a rare miss for me.

Please do keep in mind that I visited this city nearly a decade ago, so things may have changed quite a bit since my last trip.

Let’s start with some positives: Milan has a huge international airports with direct flights to both Newark and JFK airports- handy for me, being based out of New York.

I really loved exploring the Duomo! This spectacular gothic cathedral is one of the main attractions to the city and with a good reason. Even larger than St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, the enormous cathedral took six centuries to build and remains the third largest church in the world. I highly recommend buying a ticket that allows access to the terrace for an up close view of the facade the the surrounding city. While there are lift tickets available, I actually liked taking the stairs up as I felt I got a better view of the church on the climb up.

Aside from the Duomo, if people are going to Milan, they’re probably going to shop. Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is one of the most famous shopping arcades in the worlds (although Brussels would like to remind everyone that their Saint-Hubert Gallery predates this one by several years). This was nice to explore, but having visited when I was quite broke, I could only window-shop for so long.

Castello Sforzesco was lovely to visit, and hosts many of the cities art museums. The surrounding lawns seemed like a popular place to sit out for a picnic in nice weather.

Speaking of museums, Leonardo da Vinci’s famous piece “The Last Supper” is located in Santa Maria delle Grazie, though keep in mind that da Vinci’s works are famously difficult to preserve and restore so it may not look as vibrant and detailed as other copies you may have seen!

For those interested in a more spooky visit to the city, consider a stop at San Bernardino alle Ossa- the ossuary is decorated with thousands of human bones.

While food is always a priority in Italy, traveling with someone with celiac while being lactose intolerant myself was one of the most difficult experiences of the trip. Okay, yes, maybe we were setting ourselves up for disaster going to the country of bread and cheese without being able to eat bread or cheese, but Italy is known for their awareness of celiac disease- diagnosed citizens are even offered vouchers for gluten free foods every month! Yet, no matter how we tried to explain the issue we were met with blank stares and unhelpful waitstaff. We eventually found a specifically gluten free restaurant and had a lovely experience, to our great relief.

I do have to mention that I’ve visited central Italy more recently and saw gluten and dairy free foods advertised in multiple cities, so I’m not sure if it was just harder to find these things in Northern Italy or if there is just more awareness of it these days.

Still, between the gluten and the dairy issues, we spent a lot of time either a little hungry or a little sick- not conducive to the best travel experience!

I was also shocked by the panhandlers here- they seem much more aggressive than anywhere else I’ve experienced, even to this day. Unlike in many other cities, these people will directly approach obvious tourists and try to trick them into giving up some money. When I was visiting, the bracelet scam was particularly popular- they’d come right up to you and try to show you a bracelet. If you were too polite and stopped to acknowledge them, they’d try to tie it onto your wrist too tightly for you to take it off and then ask for you to pay for it, sometimes become aggressive if you did not. The best thing to do is to move right along and not slow down for these people.

Meanwhile I was practicing this policy of ignoring strangers while buying a metro ticket and someone came up to me mumbling in Italian and then tried to take my change right out of my hand as payment for his “help”. I was so surprised that I snapped out a firm “no” and walked away with my money. Sometimes that New York accent helps!

Hopefully I’m not offending too many fans of Milan here, because although Milan is beautiful, I feel that it’s not nearly as interesting as other Italian cities unless you’re in to high end shopping- the highlights can been seen in a day.

Milan is, however, a good launching point for nearby cities such as Lake Como or Venice- or even for a day trip up to Switzerland. If I were to return to Milan, it would honestly only be on my way to another nearby city.