Since we haven't posted in a while, this post might get a bit long...
Our last day in Milan was a good sight-seeing experience. We saw the Duomo, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, and the world-famous La Scala Theater while we explored the culinary delights of gelato, Italian pizza, and Risotto alla Milanese.
I woke up on Saturday morning and immediately started to worry that we missed an alarm or missed an important reservation. Instead, Abhinav reminded me that we had absolutely nothing reserved for today and could do as we pleased with the time we had, a concept that was pretty foreign to us until this point in our journey. We woke up late (which was about 9 am), took showers, and headed in the general direction of the Duomo by metro. I know we sound like a broken record right now, but the metro systems in Europe are ridiculously amazing (although we heard that some places in Germany are a bit difficult), and as soon as we got out of the metro, we were standing right in front of the Duomo.
There's a lot of history regarding the Duomo. It basically took 500 years from start to finish to complete (finishing touches were done around the 1930s) and was built in the Gothic style with pink marble that wasn't native to the local area of Milan back then. We walked around the entire structure, which is massive, since it was originally built to hold the entire population of Milan at the time (40,000 people).
Ok, enough with the history lesson and more about the overall experience: the Duomo was another "wow" experience on our backpacking adventure. This building is colossal and all the intricacies of the exterior (little statues and details on the many tall Gothic spikes) make you really admire how much manpower and time went into making this masterpiece of architecture.
Entry to the Duomo is free so Abhinav and I went in to admire the interior. Like the other churches that we saw, the Duomo had plenty of stained glass walls, depicting stories from the Bible. Many of them were of the Virgin Mary, which is not a surprise since the church was dedicated to her. (The center door has her story carved into it.) There was a service going on, so we couldn't linger for long. Nonetheless, we took our fair share of pictures and then went outside, back to the main Duomo square. In the square, there's an interesting statue of Victor Emanuele II, the first king of Milan.
After looking at the Dumono and the statue, Abhinav and I were getting ridiculously hungry, so we looked through our Rick Steeve's Italy Guidebook and found an "inexpensive" food court right next to the Duomo called Ciao, which was in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. (By the way, sight-seeing in Milan requires little transportation since the statue, the Duomo, and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II are all right next to each other in the same square.) Contrary to what Rick Steeves said, Ciao was NOT cheap. But, the food was decent (nothing much to write home about) so we ate our fill before moving onto our next escapade...
Because Ciao was conveniently located in the next attraction we wanted to see, it was easy for us to step right outside and admire the beautiful arches of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. In the middle, right underneath the glass dome, are four animals (I think they are meant to pay homage to various cities surrounding Milan? Not sure though...), one of them being a bull. The locals love spinning around on his poor little testicles so much that there's a huge hole where there was supposed to be a mosaic piece. I read that the city normally replaces the piece every few years in order to keep the poor bull whole, lol.
We walked through the Galleria to find ourselves in a little square that had a statue of Leonardo right in the center. The way that he was depicted was exactly what you would think he would look like, all sombre, contemplative, and hunched over, thinking about his next great invention. I made Abhinav take a picture in front of it after some cajoling. The statue of Leonardo conveniently also faced the next site that we wanted to see in Milan: La Scala Theater.
Originally, our plan was to wait in line at the ticket office to get discounted nose-bleed seats to a show that was playing that night. But, once we found out that the tickets, even with the discount, did not come cheap, we decided to take a detailed tour of the museum and hopefully take a peak inside the legendary theater. To reward ourselves for going with the cheaper option, we bought ourselves delicious gelato from Grom's (2 blocks away from La Scala) for 3€, a much cheaper alternative :) While we were eating in out on the square in front of Leonardo, Abhinav spotted some car... He grabbed the camera from me and very literally took a creeper picture of it. He snuck behind a tree and leaned outwards to take the picture. I almost died laughing right there. His creeper car picture I'm sure will be put up in the blog, because he's very proud of it :)
To our disappointment, we were again not allowed to take any pictures in the theater... So, we only got to a take a few, haha. Well, I wasn't going to pay money and then not take a few pictures away from the experience, was I? We didn't use any flash while taking the pictures, so we didn't harm any part of the theater. Abhinav and I were pros and taking shots of the theater... Not so much the other stuff, but that was okay. The theater was the most beautiful part. It definitely had a wow factor to it and it would have been amazing to see an opera there, but I guess I need to still leave something to desire in Europe. Maybe next time :)
Another cool thing that we saw at the theater's museum were the original costumes used for the first operatic production of Othello. There were incredible! I didn't get to take any pictures of them unfortunately :( The guard was circling around us by this time because I think they had picked up on our sneaky picture-taking habits.
After La Scala, Abhinav and I went back to the Duomo to buy tickets to go up to the very top of the church. We almost didn't because we were feeling tired, but I'm glad we pushed ourselves to go because it was a worthwhile experience. The view was fantastic and you got to see a lot of wicked cool architecture up close. You literally walk on the roof of the Duomo, where you see a golden Virgin Mary placed on the roof. Quite cool... By this point, we were absolutely exhausted and decided to head back.
Once we got to our room, we crashed for a good 2 1/2 hours. It was one of the best naps of my life. We got up, starving, so we decided to go to one of the highest rated restaurants in Milan: a small pizzeria shop about 10 minutes away from our hotel. The wait was 50 minutes, but it was TOTALLY worth it. We got free glasses of white wine while we waited for our table. We had bruschetta, risotto alla milanese, and a margharita pizza. The pizza here was even more delicious than the one we had yesterday and the risotto was just what the doctor ordered for our travel weary stomachs. Overall, a delicious meal and for those of you visiting Milan, you should definitely eat here!
Oh, and another thing I forgot to mention: I made Abhinav get some cold medication and some vitamin C tablets at the Duomo square. In hindsight, those were the best purchases we made. He's 100% now and those vitamin C chewable tablets are keeping the both of us going strong. Invest in some if you're traveling!
Also, an update on packing once again: It turns out that we did bring enough shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and such. We are running low on toothpaste, but that's easily replaceable, so no worries there. Also, I wish I had brought 1 more shirt and another jacket. Variety is good and wearing the same jacket for the past 2 weeks to every place I go is getting a bit tiring... My shoes and feet are holding up remarkably well with the Dr. Scholl's insoles that I bought. I would most definitely recommend those for backpacking adventurors! Also, I found a more comfortable position for my NorthFace Terra 45 backpack, so now I'm ready to walk for a good 20 minutes with all of my gear without feeling a thing. After that, it gets a little uncomfortable, but nothing that I can't handle...
So, I think that's all for our last day in Milan. Once we got back after the delicious pizzeria, we completely crashed. The next morning we woke up at 6 am since our train to Ancona was at 7:35 am. We took nice hot showers and made it there with plenty of time to spare. Our hotel was within walking distance to the train station so it was really easy to get there in the morning. We bought some muffins and a bottle of what we thought was orange juice (it turned out to be orange drink), which was a relatively satisfying breakfast. Once we got onto the train, Abhinav passed out while I stayed up for a bit longer to take pictures and admire the scenery. I woke him up when I saw water because it was too gorgeous to sleep through. Here's a picture of the coast from the train.
The cool thing about our train ride was that we had two entire rows of seats to ourselves the entire time, which is probably why it was so easy for the both of us to fall asleep. Thankfully, we were awake for the Ancona stop and got out.
On a side note here, I'm going to give you guys an update on those Belgian chocolates I ran to get before our train in Brussels… They're not doing so well, unfortunately. The rough experience of backpacking has certainly taken a toll on these chocolates, despite our best efforts :( We might have to look for a shipping service in Athens so they can get home to our mothers in relatively edible condition because they will most definitely not be able to survive another 2 weeks. Sorry Mom! We tried really hard!
OK, so back to Ancona. We got to the port city and were lost for about 30 minutes. The lady at the information counter told us to take Bus 12 to get to the actual port where the ferries take off from Italy to go to Greece. We waited at the stop for 30 minutes, but the bus still didn't show. Unfortunately, we had to get a taxi, which costed us a ridiculous 13€ for a 10-minute ride from the train station to the port. After griping about that expense for a little bit, we decided to hurry to try to catch the SuperFast
ferry that travels from Ancona-Igonumtisa-Patras. The ferry was super nice from the outside, and you could see that the interiors were really nicely done too. However, everything on board was really overpriced, and there was a severe lack of stuff to do while on board. Even the Wi-Fi was spotty considering it was a satellite internet provider as we were in the middle of the sea. We paid a bit extra for one of the private cabins on board, which gave us two relatively comfy twin beds and a great night of sleep (not to mention, our own bathroom). The entire trip took about 23 hours, but we were happy to hop off board. We met another American couple doing their own Europe trip, and spent some time talking to them before hopping off board.
Once we got outside, we noticed that there was a SuperFast Ferries bus to Athens that was for 20€ per person. We all agreed the cost per person was WAY too expensive since it was only for a one-way ticket as well. So, we decided to explore Patras a little to find other alternatives after buying our return tickets on the ferry for May 5th. The lady there told us that there are two options for travel to Athens: one was by train and the other was by bus. The train takes a considerably longer time and goes to Pireus (the port of Athens) while the bus is a shorter more direct journey to the center of Athens. We initially tried to take the train, which would have been a cheaper option, but it looked like the trains were shut down. So, we wound up having to take the bus to Athens, which costed each of us 18.90€. Yay for saving 1.10€!
The bus took about 3 hours and it was nice to see the coast. We took plenty of beautiful and scenic pictures. We also took this opportunity to sleep once again :) Once we arrived in Athens, we had to take another local bus to the central square called Omonia (bus number 51). The fare for this bus was 1.40€ per person... May 2nd was not a good day for staying under budget... But, we managed and then walked the rest of the way to the hostel we were staying at, Athenstyle. Luckily, we decided to get some money from the ATM beforehand and avoided the credit card transaction fee that we would have had to pay at the hostel.
The one thing I remember about Greece from my previous visit in the 11th grade was Souvlaki. They are DELICIOUS and cheap meals to have in Greece and I was craving some the minute we arrived. So, we asked the girl at the reception where we could get the best Souvlaki in the area, and she enthusiastically directed us to a small square behind the hostel that had cheap and savory souvlaki. We went there after putting our stuff down in our room and stuffed ourselves extremely well with amazing souvlaki. We were not disappointed at all. It was delicious!
After our amazing dinner, we headed back to the hostel and went to bed since we were exhausted from our journey and had a big day ahead of us the following morning: our first day in Greece!
Our last day in Milan was a good sight-seeing experience. We saw the Duomo, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, and the world-famous La Scala Theater while we explored the culinary delights of gelato, Italian pizza, and Risotto alla Milanese.
I woke up on Saturday morning and immediately started to worry that we missed an alarm or missed an important reservation. Instead, Abhinav reminded me that we had absolutely nothing reserved for today and could do as we pleased with the time we had, a concept that was pretty foreign to us until this point in our journey. We woke up late (which was about 9 am), took showers, and headed in the general direction of the Duomo by metro. I know we sound like a broken record right now, but the metro systems in Europe are ridiculously amazing (although we heard that some places in Germany are a bit difficult), and as soon as we got out of the metro, we were standing right in front of the Duomo.There's a lot of history regarding the Duomo. It basically took 500 years from start to finish to complete (finishing touches were done around the 1930s) and was built in the Gothic style with pink marble that wasn't native to the local area of Milan back then. We walked around the entire structure, which is massive, since it was originally built to hold the entire population of Milan at the time (40,000 people).
Entry to the Duomo is free so Abhinav and I went in to admire the interior. Like the other churches that we saw, the Duomo had plenty of stained glass walls, depicting stories from the Bible. Many of them were of the Virgin Mary, which is not a surprise since the church was dedicated to her. (The center door has her story carved into it.) There was a service going on, so we couldn't linger for long. Nonetheless, we took our fair share of pictures and then went outside, back to the main Duomo square. In the square, there's an interesting statue of Victor Emanuele II, the first king of Milan.
After looking at the Dumono and the statue, Abhinav and I were getting ridiculously hungry, so we looked through our Rick Steeve's Italy Guidebook and found an "inexpensive" food court right next to the Duomo called Ciao, which was in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. (By the way, sight-seeing in Milan requires little transportation since the statue, the Duomo, and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II are all right next to each other in the same square.) Contrary to what Rick Steeves said, Ciao was NOT cheap. But, the food was decent (nothing much to write home about) so we ate our fill before moving onto our next escapade...
Because Ciao was conveniently located in the next attraction we wanted to see, it was easy for us to step right outside and admire the beautiful arches of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. In the middle, right underneath the glass dome, are four animals (I think they are meant to pay homage to various cities surrounding Milan? Not sure though...), one of them being a bull. The locals love spinning around on his poor little testicles so much that there's a huge hole where there was supposed to be a mosaic piece. I read that the city normally replaces the piece every few years in order to keep the poor bull whole, lol.We walked through the Galleria to find ourselves in a little square that had a statue of Leonardo right in the center. The way that he was depicted was exactly what you would think he would look like, all sombre, contemplative, and hunched over, thinking about his next great invention. I made Abhinav take a picture in front of it after some cajoling. The statue of Leonardo conveniently also faced the next site that we wanted to see in Milan: La Scala Theater.
Originally, our plan was to wait in line at the ticket office to get discounted nose-bleed seats to a show that was playing that night. But, once we found out that the tickets, even with the discount, did not come cheap, we decided to take a detailed tour of the museum and hopefully take a peak inside the legendary theater. To reward ourselves for going with the cheaper option, we bought ourselves delicious gelato from Grom's (2 blocks away from La Scala) for 3€, a much cheaper alternative :) While we were eating in out on the square in front of Leonardo, Abhinav spotted some car... He grabbed the camera from me and very literally took a creeper picture of it. He snuck behind a tree and leaned outwards to take the picture. I almost died laughing right there. His creeper car picture I'm sure will be put up in the blog, because he's very proud of it :)
Another cool thing that we saw at the theater's museum were the original costumes used for the first operatic production of Othello. There were incredible! I didn't get to take any pictures of them unfortunately :( The guard was circling around us by this time because I think they had picked up on our sneaky picture-taking habits.
Once we got to our room, we crashed for a good 2 1/2 hours. It was one of the best naps of my life. We got up, starving, so we decided to go to one of the highest rated restaurants in Milan: a small pizzeria shop about 10 minutes away from our hotel. The wait was 50 minutes, but it was TOTALLY worth it. We got free glasses of white wine while we waited for our table. We had bruschetta, risotto alla milanese, and a margharita pizza. The pizza here was even more delicious than the one we had yesterday and the risotto was just what the doctor ordered for our travel weary stomachs. Overall, a delicious meal and for those of you visiting Milan, you should definitely eat here!
Oh, and another thing I forgot to mention: I made Abhinav get some cold medication and some vitamin C tablets at the Duomo square. In hindsight, those were the best purchases we made. He's 100% now and those vitamin C chewable tablets are keeping the both of us going strong. Invest in some if you're traveling!Also, an update on packing once again: It turns out that we did bring enough shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and such. We are running low on toothpaste, but that's easily replaceable, so no worries there. Also, I wish I had brought 1 more shirt and another jacket. Variety is good and wearing the same jacket for the past 2 weeks to every place I go is getting a bit tiring... My shoes and feet are holding up remarkably well with the Dr. Scholl's insoles that I bought. I would most definitely recommend those for backpacking adventurors! Also, I found a more comfortable position for my NorthFace Terra 45 backpack, so now I'm ready to walk for a good 20 minutes with all of my gear without feeling a thing. After that, it gets a little uncomfortable, but nothing that I can't handle...
The cool thing about our train ride was that we had two entire rows of seats to ourselves the entire time, which is probably why it was so easy for the both of us to fall asleep. Thankfully, we were awake for the Ancona stop and got out.
On a side note here, I'm going to give you guys an update on those Belgian chocolates I ran to get before our train in Brussels… They're not doing so well, unfortunately. The rough experience of backpacking has certainly taken a toll on these chocolates, despite our best efforts :( We might have to look for a shipping service in Athens so they can get home to our mothers in relatively edible condition because they will most definitely not be able to survive another 2 weeks. Sorry Mom! We tried really hard!
ferry that travels from Ancona-Igonumtisa-Patras. The ferry was super nice from the outside, and you could see that the interiors were really nicely done too. However, everything on board was really overpriced, and there was a severe lack of stuff to do while on board. Even the Wi-Fi was spotty considering it was a satellite internet provider as we were in the middle of the sea. We paid a bit extra for one of the private cabins on board, which gave us two relatively comfy twin beds and a great night of sleep (not to mention, our own bathroom). The entire trip took about 23 hours, but we were happy to hop off board. We met another American couple doing their own Europe trip, and spent some time talking to them before hopping off board.
Once we got outside, we noticed that there was a SuperFast Ferries bus to Athens that was for 20€ per person. We all agreed the cost per person was WAY too expensive since it was only for a one-way ticket as well. So, we decided to explore Patras a little to find other alternatives after buying our return tickets on the ferry for May 5th. The lady there told us that there are two options for travel to Athens: one was by train and the other was by bus. The train takes a considerably longer time and goes to Pireus (the port of Athens) while the bus is a shorter more direct journey to the center of Athens. We initially tried to take the train, which would have been a cheaper option, but it looked like the trains were shut down. So, we wound up having to take the bus to Athens, which costed each of us 18.90€. Yay for saving 1.10€!
The one thing I remember about Greece from my previous visit in the 11th grade was Souvlaki. They are DELICIOUS and cheap meals to have in Greece and I was craving some the minute we arrived. So, we asked the girl at the reception where we could get the best Souvlaki in the area, and she enthusiastically directed us to a small square behind the hostel that had cheap and savory souvlaki. We went there after putting our stuff down in our room and stuffed ourselves extremely well with amazing souvlaki. We were not disappointed at all. It was delicious!
After our amazing dinner, we headed back to the hostel and went to bed since we were exhausted from our journey and had a big day ahead of us the following morning: our first day in Greece!
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