For the past two days I went to Milan because my dear friend Ertugrul was there for a training. How this even came about was kind of a funny story. I met Ertu back in 2005, during my senior year of high school when I went to Istanbul, Turkey to visit my sister.
We ended up staying at his apartment for the few weeks that I was there, and we seemed to get along almost instantly! Since then, I have been keeping in contact with him via facebook, but I hadn't seen him since then...until now! I randomly messaged him, as sort of a joke about a month ago, letting him know that I was at least going to be a little closer to Turkey, and would be in Italy for a month. I was then surprised to find out in his message back that he, too coincidentally was going to be in Italy for a training during one of the weeks I was there. This started a long email exchange back and forth that basically led to my great trip to Milan!
I decided to make the trip to visit him on Wednesday, and this marked another first...I got to figure out the Italian train station! I luckily had scouted out where the station was after visiting the Santa Maria Novella church last weekend, since the station is right across the street. I then got my ticket, and watched about 10 different people validate their tickets before I figured it out and felt like I could act like I knew what I was doing. The trains to Milan are big and really nice, but I was at first worried because they showed the train as going to Bologna, but the train conductor assured me that that was only the first stop. I was further reassured when I got on the train, and it showed all the stops including the one for Milano Centrale. The train ride was a nice 2hour journey where we passed by many farms and beautiful views of the Italian countryside.
It is amazing when you catch your first glimpse of Milan, however, because it moves drastically from countryside to skyscrapers and other tall buildings. I could already tell that this city was going to be different than Florence. It has a very big city feel compared to Florence, which while still large in size feels more like a small town.
Ertu and I had made plans to meet in the center of the city by the Duomo of Milano. Here are some of my first glimpses of the city (you can probably see how different it was from Florence):
As I walked to the Duomo, I was intimidated by all the tall buildings even though I knew from the guidebooks that it is a large banking city, as well as, being the fashion capital of Italy (obvious from the amount of women I saw wearing leather pants and 3inch heels)! I loved all the parks I came across, though because they seemed like little hidden treasures that I would just come across after walking by so many tall buildings.
Upon arriving at the center, I was greeted by the extremely Gothic structure that of the Duomo of Milano (I found out later that this is the largest Gothic Cathedral in the world)!
Milan's center seemed to have many more people fascinated by the pigeons, with numerous venders going around selling feed for the birds. I did not join in this activity, but instead watched from the outside. People had pigeons flying everywhere, and climbing all over their bodies from their heads to their shoulders (to be honest I was scared that one of those pigeons was going to fly by and poop on me, but I was lucky).
As our meeting time approached, I found myself thinking "what if I don't recognize him?" which was silly because Ertu has a very distinguishable look with his crazy curly hair and sure enough we spotted one another immediately! It was so fun to meet up with him after almost 6 years! Since we were both hungry, we decided to grab dinner in the spectacular Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.
If you have never been, it is this covered double archway opening up into this octagon, which was fully decked out like most of Italy still is in green, white, and red left over from the 150 year birthday celebration of Italy.
This was an especially fun place to eat because as it starts to get later in the evening the lights make you feel like you are dining in a palace.
I had the amazing vegetarian ravioli, while Ertu had the lasagna and we split the risotto Milanese, which was supposed to be one of the dishes Milan is known for. It was really good! We had a lot to catch up on, not realizing how much had happened over the past 6years. We talked about our lives since then since I was only 17 when we met, and he was only 21. After eating our delicious dinner, and sipping our espressos (as our dessert), we decided to take a night walk, where we stumbled on Milan's castle, and another park...which was much creeper at night, needless to say we only stayed there for 10minutes before catching the train to go to the golf resort (haha) where he was staying. We talked until pretty early in the morning, coming up with more Ertu and Rachel jokes that I'm sure we would only find funny so I will spare you the curtesy laugh.
The next day, Ertu went in for his training, and I hung out in this huge and stunning park in Milan before taking the train back to Florence. It was a great trip where I got to see another city in Italy, and meet up with a great friend!
Off to Venice tomorrow for the weekend! I wonder what awaits me there?
Ciao,
Rachel
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