Milano - Italy

Our flight to Milano was rather uneventful, apart from a dodgy African guy being escorted from Mykonos airport by security. We arrived early afternoon and made it fairly easily to our hotel on the train. After dropping our bags we headed out for a look around Milano. We were quite impressed, possibly as we did not have huge expectations for Milan. After wandering around a nice park we headed to the main square and the Duomo Cathedral. This Cathedral was amazing. It is the largest gothic cathedral in the world and according to lonely planet it has 3400 statues, 135 spires and 155 gargoyles. The marble columns were massive and there were so many stain glass windows which were reflecting the setting sunlight onto the stone walls. Milano is known for its fashion and high end shopping. There were certainly some very nicely dressed people around the city. We headed to what is referred to as the Golden Quad which is a few city blocks of shopping streets, lined with brands so expensive that we didn’t recognize the names of many of them. “oohhh look that top is only 700 euro!” Feeling poor we ate spaghetti for dinner and then headed back to the hotel.
Our one full day in Milano we were up early and headed for a café/bar of croissants and coffee. Our plan for the morning was to organize our transport to Lake Como for the following day. We headed to the Central Station which wasn’t too far from our accommodation. However after a few hassles we found out that this was the wrong station. After a bit of a walk, that showed us some nice parts of Milano including pizza and coffee, another station that was not the correct one, we made it to the right place and bought our tickets.
Conveniently the station was just beside the Castello, which was next on our intinery. We started by having a rest in the gardens, the sun was out so it was quite relaxing. There was not a lot else to see, an arch at the back of the gardens, a courtyard in the castle and moat. We did not go inside which contained some galleries. Damien was excited as after we booked our flight to Milano, we realized that the Sunday we were there was going to be the final day of the Giro D’Italia, a 2 week cycling race. It was a 30km time trial which wound its way around the city to the finishing line in the main square by the Duomo. We spent the afternoon watching this from a few places, starting at the castle and ending up in a grandstand in the main square for the final riders and the presentation. While the winner was pretty much decided prior to the final day, it was still a good crowd and atmosphere.
After the presentation we wandered through the nice shops and a garden on our way back towards the hotel. We ate pizza in a pizzeria nearby and were impressed by the Italian guy next to us’ pizza which had tomato paste and French fries on it. The reason that we came to Milano was we were able to get cheap flights there from Greece, and we did not expect much from the city. We are pleased to say that we did really enjoy it here but were glad to be heading to Como tomorrow.