Vacation in Europe: Milan, Italy

days 9 - 12

This was our first visit to Italy. My husband and I both speak French and Spanish, and we had always felt that Italian was a pretty even mix between these two languages. We are both able to understand the better part of Italian movies, for example, so we really thought we'd have very little trouble communicating in Italy. Not so! Perhaps Milan's Italian is quite different from whichever region's is the standard, but we had a terrible time. This was the first time I had ever traveled anywhere without speaking the local language. It was awful. We managed to get by, more or less by speaking Spanish with an Italian accent and throwing in the odd French word here and there, but it was really difficult to communicate. In addition, the Italians made no effort to speak English (which is fine, but if you think Paris is bad, try Milan!) I figure that it's one of two things: either Italians in Milan speak even less English than the French in Paris, or the Milanese are even prouder of their language than Parisians are of theirs.

I'm not really big on museums, so my husband ran off to visit some of those while I played on the internet. On our third day, we had a fabulous two-hour lunch. The restaurant we chose (unfortunately I can't remember the name of it) had a sign saying they would open at noon, but the staff was still eating lunch. We came back at 12:30, they weren't ready yet. 1pm, still not ready. We finally sat down at 1:30 (by which time I was *starving*) - but it was worth it. The food was wonderful, the olive oil in my salad tasted like pure melted butter, the service was good, the wine was lovely, and we just had a great time. I think this was the best meal of the entire trip (My husband's favorite comes a bit later, in Spain).

One morning on our walk downtown, we happened onto what is apparently *the* street of high fashion. All the big names were there: Gucci, Christian Dior, Prada, Alfani, etc. What was really weird, though, was that the street itself was uninteresting, dirty, and very narrow. It was so incongruous to see these expensive, ultra-chic stores looking out over such a yucky street.

The next day we visited La Scala, the famous theater. The museum had a special exhibition called "The Sight of Music," which was a terrific collection of paintings and other artwork that somehow represented music: paintings of musicians, photographs, etc. It was really nice. We would have loved to see a performance at La Scala, but unfortunately the season didn't start until 10 September.

On our last morning in Milan, we wanted to go swimming, so we walked all the way across town to a huge public pool. We had to pay to get in, we both had to buy swim caps before we could swim (yes, even men had to wear them), and then the water turned out to be ice cold. It was also cloudy out (for the first time since we had arrived in Italy), so swimming turned out to be an all-around disaster.

We drove on to Turin for lunch and then headed back to France for some rafting.

Next stop: Bourg St.-Maurice        Vacation Index

Would you like to share your travel stories or comment on mine? Visit the forum and tell us all about your adventures, in English or en français. 

Discuss in my forum