An early start (5.30am) from home/ London Stansted had us in Milan by lunchtime. We took the airport bus from Bergamo into Milan Centrale station, then the metro to our hotel. Our first visit on our whistle stop tour was the Duomo.
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If you hate crowds and tourist traps you might want to get here early in the morning to avoid the hoards. There were thousands of people jostling for space along with lots of hawkers and beggars. We avoided allowing them to give us their 'free' cord bracelets in case it was a way of marking us out for pickpockets! (We found out on our return that it was)
We bought some gelato then strolled off to the Leonardo Da Vinci museum. We were disappointed by this venue. There were life size reconstructions of Da Vinci's designs, but all of the drawings etc were facsimiles. The displays were very wordy and, as they were in Italian (fair enough) eluded us and we found it all very 'dry'.
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On leaving the museum we turned into the Galleria to window shop in the designer stores. Thankfully there was nothing to my taste (all very glitzy) as everything was out of our price range!
By this point the hoards of tourists, early start and lack of recent health was getting to us so we decided to head of to Navigli for an early dinner and, hopefully, some peace.
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This was more like it. The grand canal is small and quite narrow but there were fewer people, the sun was out and setting and it was less touristy. After a pleasant meal, canal side walk, and avoiding some more hawkers and beggars it was time for us to head back towards the hotel. My cold was rearing its ugly head again. The sciatica I'd been suffering was becoming very uncomfortable and Alan's hip was painful. (God we are decrepit)
We were both sound asleep by 8pm - a great advert for our hotel's beds!
Alan went for a run, to loosen up, the next morning. This is also his way of orienting himself and finding places for us to visit. On his run he found a nice coffee shop for breakfast and a park (Parco Ravizza) where there were 4 large enclosures for dogs to run free, and a small flea market being set up. On our visit here later it finally felt like we were seeing the real Milan. We were having coffee and cornettos with the locals and walking with them as they walked their dogs.
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Lunch was a complete flook! We wanted a bit of pizza or pasta to tide us over until we arrived back in England in the evening but could not find anywhere open. En route back to our hotel,as we'd given up and we're going to collect our luggage and eat later, we passed a bar (The Room) we'd seen the day before. Noticing that they also did food we decided to try to get something there. This turned out to be a great move!
We were offered the choice of sitting indoors or outdoors. Thinking we'd be sitting roadside watching the world go by we chose to side outside. We were, however, escorted through a modern restaurant and theatre to a secret garden with a ceiling made from vines and fairy lights. The Room offers set menus from around the world. An aperitif, fruit juice, bottle of water, bread and conserves, bottomless coffee and two courses from the destination of your choice for €25 euros each!
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Our flight home was delayed but uneventful and 39 hours after departing we were back home