Fashion Killa-Day 118-May 8th, 2018

For probably the fifth time this semester, I got up absurdly early to catch a bus. With a 5:45 bus, I got up at 4:15 and made sure to leave by 4:55. It was a forty minute walk and I wanted to make sure I had enough time. This walk really isn’t too bad though, my long strides make it closer to thirty minutes and it’s oddly relaxing. I just pop in a podcast and I’m there before I know it.

I found my bus, but I also found the customs officers in tactical gear searching every single person’s bag. I have never seen this before while travelling in France. This was only for the people who were already on the bus, so my bag didn’t get searched. This was probably for the best since I was transporting a French bottle of wine. Though, I don’t think there’s anything illegal about that.

Here are the custom’s people or the douane in French

After some waiting, we got the all clear and I boarded the bus. I promptly donned my neck pillow, sleep mask, and ear plus then went to sleep. This wasn’t the greatest sleep of my life, but it was better than nothing. At one tunnel, I woke up when we were going through a toll. I heard the worker outside the bus say in Italian they might have to search the bus. Considering I was just sleeping, this was the last thing I wanted. I must be lucky, because they let us through without a search. I continued my crappy sleep until we arrived in Turin, the first stop.

Guess what! Another police officer came on board and had to check all of our passports. I don’t know what it is with this bus, but I’m very glad I left my pound of cocaine at home this morning. Phew!

After another two hours, we finally arrived in Milan without any further security checks. The weather was warm and the sun was out. I could immediately tell Milan was a lot different than Sicily. The first thing I noticed was the subway, I had forgot how useful these were. I have had very few experiences where taking public transportation buses has been easy or convenient . The unlimited day subway card was only four euros, so I got that. I had already done my fair share of walking this morning and opted to take the subway.

My first stop was at the hostel to drop off my bag and check in. The hostel seemed really nice from my first impressions and relatively central. I did not stay for long though, I ditched my bag in a locker and headed out for the city.

I am very tired of just looking at museums and churches in European cities; today would be different. Milan is one of the fashion capitals of the world and I wanted to take full advantage of that. On the bus earlier, I made six different checkpoints on Google Maps of stores I wanted to go to. My goal was to go to every one with some wandering in between. Before I did this, I needed some good Italian food first.

Utilizing the powers of Yelp, I found a highly rated restaurant nearby called Da Oscar. I found the restaurant and got my table for one. I’ve eaten alone enough times now that it doesn’t bother me at all. Rather than getting my typical gnocchi or carbonara, I decided to get a spinach ravioli in a sauce with a bunch of stuff in it. The service at this restaurant was phenomenal. Immediately after I sat down, they brought out a complimentary quiche, bowl of olives and bread. My food came out very quickly as well and was amazing.

My ravioli

This stuff was seriously good and I finished the meal off with an Italian espresso. Strong, tiny and bitter, it was perfect. This was a much needed energy boost after my crappy night of sleep.

I headed to the first store. On the way there, I stumbled into another designer store that seemed cool. It was the flagship and gigantic. I experienced a first here, someone thinking I was Russian, then Italian. To be fair, the employee was Russian and I was wearing a jacket from a Russian brand. We talked for a bit about the designer and she showed me around the very impressive store.

Here are some highlights:

A Full Lamborghini in the middle of the room

A Crocodile skin jacket that was hand painted by the artist Alec Monopoly.

I am not a huge fan of the artist, but this jacket was still very cool because it 1 of 1. It is for sale at a whopping $120,000. After leaving the store, I started my Milan Fashion grand tour.

This involved around eight stores and I will spare you all the details of every store I went into. Instead, I will do my typical highlights and selected pictures.

This is not a clothing store, but I couldn’t resist going into the Lego store.

Here is a recreation of the famous Duomo in Milan

I went in this one cool store that had a ton of random knick nacks on the first floor.

Here is a cool monkey statue. Unfortunately I did not buy this one

At another store, I recognized someone from Instagram in the store. This isn’t your usual Instagram fashion person, but the ten year old son of a fashion designer. He got some popularity after being decked out in designer clothes while at fashion week shows with his mom. I think it is a little stupid to spend thousands of dollars on clothes for a ten year old, but I still asked him to take a picture. No regrets.

@TheGoldenFly and I. For reference, his shoes are worth over a thousand dollars. He also always dramatically covers his face in photos.

I only talked to him for a second, but is was funny watching him and his “entourage”, aka his mom and dad plus one other adult. They were not joking around, they spent at least a few grand on clothes for this kid in the store. What an interesting life.

I hit up another few stores and did some wandering as well.

Here is some castle I don’t know the name of. It had a cool moat though

Here are some buildings that I thought looked cool

Here is a canal, though a bit lackluster compared to the ones I saw in Venice

Before I finally headed back to the hostel to get ready for dinner, I figured I should at least go see the Duomo. This is the giant church in Milan, represented in Legos earlier in this blog.

Frankly I thought the Lego version was cooler

I saw a bunch of tourist playing with pigeons here too, which was hilarious. People treat pigeons much differently than they do in New York City. Feeling hot and tired, I headed back to the hostel for a cool down and shower. I had some time to kill before eating dinner anyway.

The hostel showers were relatively clean and I felt a lot better. I spent some time researching what I wanted for dinner afterwards. Utilizing Yelp once again, I found a pizza place that seemed cheap and good. It was a ten minute walk from the hostel, so I headed over.

I grabbed a table and ordered a large slice of pizza. From the pictures I saw, the pizza looked like deep dish pizza and was meant to be eaten with fork and knife. I guess the waiter must have either been impressed by my Italian or felt bad I was eating alone, because he gave me a free pepsi and charged me for the smaller sized slice. I couldn’t complain. My pizza came out and looked heavenly.

This was very thick, delicious, and extremely filling

I enjoyed both the pizza and reduced price a lot. I guess the occasional solo travel does pay off!

After eating, I headed back to the hostel. I would have gotten gelato, but I was feeling seriously full. I grabbed my laptop and headed to the common room to type up my blog for the day. I made some brief conversations too with some of the other guests there.

Before I knew it, it was 10:00 and I started to get ready for bed. I have to be up at 7 tomorrow, which is much better start time than this morning. I am taking the 8:10 train to Monterosso, where I will meet up with my Aunt, Uncle and cousins.

It’s currently raining and thundering as aI type this and I hope the weather is better tomorrow.