An Afternoon in Milan

This week I headed out to Milan with my husband to meet up with some really good friends of ours who were visiting from back home. It was a whirlwind trip of a three and a half hour (each way) train ride and a few hours of touring, sight seeing and mostly just catching up with our friends. But I thought it would be fun to share with you few of the highlights of the city.

I’m personally not a fan of cities in general, I come from Los Angeles, have lived for years in Brooklyn and had more than my fill of city life. I currently relish life in the Italian country side where the hustle and bustle of the town includes our neighbors’ tractor as he plows his fields, the goats and sheep chattering back and forth, and every hour the church bells ringing. But every once in a while an excursion into a fascinating metropolis like Milan is not so shabby.

One of the things I love here in Italy is the architecture and the details of the Italian art. In Milan I was simply fascinated with “Il Duomo” (pictured just below) it’s absolutely intriguing as you can see.

By the way, just a side note, if you’re traveling Italy, avoid the regional trains. I learned this the hard way on several different trips including our train ride up there. I didn’t even realize there was a difference, but it turns out they don’t always have functioning air nor windows that open, which in the middle of a hot humid heat wave you literally feeling like you’re taking your last breath every breath. It’s stuffy and uncomfortable and to top it off stinks inside, so needless to say it makes for a long stuffy, uncomfortable ride! And they just don’t seem to be kept up well in general.

I don’t like to make my trips all about food trying to figure out where to eat so when possible I try to bring my own food for the ride. So, for the train ride up I brought my raw vegan snacksI made in advance like cacao date balls and fruit to eat along the way. So I didn’t eat much once I was there, but of course your girl had to stop for some vegan gelato! We found this amazing gelateria that had several vegan options, I was in heaven.

The choices are normally limited to fruit flavors since they’re usually never made with milk. But, at Vanilla Gelati Italiani they had several amazing creamy flavors like pistacchio and hazelnut which were like the real deal. Interestingly enough they were made with the base of olive oil not soy which is very common. I really try to avoid soy.

I ordered the concord grape and fig gelato. Total side note, I’m probably going to date myself here but when I was a kid my mom would buy the frozen concord grape juice. The one that you’d squeeze the frozen mold of juice out into a pitcher of water and mix together and voilà you got juice. Well, when I first tasted the concord grape flavor it totally took me back to our kitchen as a kid. Do they even still sell juice like that anymore??

Anyway, it was really sweet and concord-y tasting it tasted like I was biting into a grape, it was so yummy!

The Vittorio Emanuele building (below) was magnificent. from the mosaic floors to the architecture design, the detailed art on the walls to the high-end fashion all around I was totally intrigued. It’s a must see!

So those were the highlights of our afternoon…well really my highlight was our friends we were there to see, but the highlights of the city were these for me, I hope if you’re in Italy you get to check them out too.

Have you ever been to Milan? If so leave a comment below and let me know what you’re highlights of the city were I’d love to hear!