We are quite hungry after our exploration of the Monumental Cemetery and Sforza’s Castle so we take the metro to the Duomo and hope to be able to find something to eat in the area. As we exit the metro station we are taken aback by the number of people here, we thought there were a lot at Sforza’s Castle but here it is an overload of people and activities.
The reason for all these masses of people? It is the Duomo of course, lots and lots of them are trying to take photos in different poses, positions and configurations. And for good reason as we are lucky and the sun is highlighting the Duomo perfectly this late afternoon.
Another major attraction is the Victorio Emanuel II Gallery a covered shopping plaza with luxury brands and we are hoping a few good restaurants. However given that we can barely enter it and then we see how busy (and expensive) the restaurants are we decide to search elsewhere.
In the middle of the gallery, interestingly, the masses thin out. It seems that most just enter from the Duomo and then exit the same way. Here is a weird attraction, a drawn bull on the floor, where supposedly of you rotate x times on its balls you will have luck…or return back to Milan…or something like that. A weird superstition that is taken quite seriously by people as evidenced by the whole in the floor where the poor bulls balls are supposed to be.
There are all the expected expensive Milanese fashion brands like Prada, Dolce &Gabbana and so on. We window watch (not even shop) a few and then decide to exit the gallery at the other end.
At this end the major attraction is the world famous Scala Theater…which is much smaller from the outside than we expected. We wanted to visit its museum during our stay but in the end we weren’t able to do it and catch a glimpse inside.
We then return back parallel to the Vittorio Emanuele II Gallery arriving in Piazza Mercanti, one of the older Piazzas in Milan surrounded by some magnificent buildings. But no restaurants for us as the few we see are either crazy busy or very poorly rated.
We continue to Piazza Cordusio surrounded by some impressive buildings but again no available restaurants. We decide to give up and open Google Maps for help and find a smaller parallel street which seems to have some reasonable restaurants.
The restaurant we choose is a smaller one and has some Milanese specialties like the Elephant Ear. It is not an actual Elephant Ear, obviously, but still it is a local specialty, and quite good to boot. The pasta however is quite dry and not that exceptional in our opinion.
And then it is time to return to our hotel which takes about two hours, taking the metro then running to the train and catching it literally as it was leaving the station. Then through the airport to the shuttle and from the shuttle stop to hotel, a quite lengthy return with multiple methods of transportation. We are quite tired when we arrive at the hotel as we have slept only about four-five hours after our long flight and then explored Milan much of the day on foot so we go to sleep soon and hope tomorrow we will be less exhausted.
