Touring Milan and (Window) Shopping

It is true – Milan is the fashion center of Italy, the way people dress here is incredible…especially the ladies hehehehe! BUT the prices here are also nuts…I was shopping in the “cheap” area and nearly wet my pants after seeing the crazy prices. I was walking around the city today in a Nautica T-shirt and Echo kakis and felt like a real slob here.

I’ll start by telling about the day from the start:Getting there via subway was an adventure in itself! Peter and I took the shuttle bus from the hotel to the subway station. When we got there we struggled to use the automatic ticket machine but eventually got on the subway fine. Then after two stops for some reason half the people on the subway rushed off and the subway turned around and went back to where we started. The subway driver was saying something for a long time on the intercom but it was Italian so I had no clue. Anyways, so we ended up back where we started! I was able to find a subway worker who spoke English but he wasn’t much help so we just ended up getting back on the subway and got off at the second stop (as did everyone else!). We were rushed by the workers out of the subway which was weird. I don’t know what was going on there and no one helped us understand what had happened...but being the cheap guys we are (and not wanting to pay for the bus) we decided to take advantage of the opportunity and walk to the city center from there…it was not that far after all. We split up after that and I headed up to northern Milan hoping to find some reasonably priced clothes. To make a long story short, I took some wrong turns and somehow ended up in ChinaTown, Milan hahahaha. It was very interesting seeing Italian and Chinese writing mixed together. Anyways I got back on track and went to all the so-called ‘tourist attractions’. The Castle in Milan (pic posted) was pretty nice and the city center was too…but other than that Milan wasn’t as great as I had hoped it to be, especially when you compare it to Florence and Rome. There’s lots of graffiti on the buildings too. There are however TONS of designer fashion stores here – every brand name you could think of. The prices though are out of this world – to the point of it being unreal. This city is also psycho about their soccer team. There were literally thousands of people wearing soccer jersey’s walking throughout the city singing songs and drinking lots and lots hahahaha. At the end of the day there were hundreds of these fans gathered in their green striped jerseys sitting and drinking on the street near Duomo. It was very interesting to see. Other than that there’s not much to say…I’m super tired from all the walking I’ve done today plus I also just went to the gym at the hotel so I’m gonna go to sleep tonight and pass on checking out the night life here, though I hear it’s supposed to be great in Milan. Tomorrow we head for Zurich!