just stuff: Milan

A weekend in Milan with the girls. We stayed at a cheap, clean and functional hostel made out of a monastery, and adjoining a church, which was a good introduction to one of the most important aspects of Italian life, religion. Others, at least in glitzy northern Milan, seem to be food, fashion and fags (Italian indoors clearly not yet being smoke-free).

The food was generally great and occasionally fabulous, as is the Italian eating experience. Breakfast was oddly expensive, considering it's just a capuccino, a croissant and a (freshly squeezed, though) orange juice. But excellent pizza was cheap as chips, and even plati secondi like risotto or polenta alla porcini, washed down with local Lombardian red wine, wasn't exactly bank breaking, and in the restaurant upstairs from the Jamaica bar was fantastic. Served by a smoke-breathing, bread-throwing dragon of a manager, but rescued by the lovely barmaid Julia, who was summoned upstairs to translate for us.

We touristed lightly, wandering the swish and beautiful streets of the centre and window shopping in the fashion quarter; checking out the inside and the roof of the fairytale Duomo cathedral; looking for trendy modern design in the Triennale museum (but finding more style than substance, which is possibly what you can say about the centre of Milan in general); enjoying the bustling foodhall in the main department store; hanging out in the Sempioni park on a sunny Sunday morning and watching a fashion shoot in action; spinning on the bull's balls in the grandly named shopping mall, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II; and discovering the more rundown but arty & boho Navigli canal district, with its cheap & cheerful shops (they say canal, but they mean 'practically dry drainage ditch'). And partaking of aperitivo (free and often yummy buffet food that appears in the evening happy hour) with a Milanese cocktail or two, the Negroni Spagliato (bitter and delicious). Well, when in Rome....