I am having a love affair with Italy. I fell in love with this country since I’ve arrived in Milan, Italy. So many tourists or travelers usually skipped Milan for whatever reasons. I agreed that it doesn’t have much things to see like Venice or Florence but Milan is such a beautiful city.

One thing that irritated me about Milan, is the airport. Their airport is out of the city. It’s about 45-60 minutes by taxi or 90-120 minutes by the metro to reach the city center. They implemented a flat rate for taxi from the airport to city center and vice versa. It’s about 90 euros for one way. That cost a lot of money. I opted to hire a private car to picked me up and the cost was 85 euros so it was cheaper than taxi and it was more comfortable. If I didn’t have problem with my left ankle (I still have issues with it since I twisted my ankle in Valencia), I would just take the metro. It would take me 2 hours to get to my hostel but I would saved some money. Anyway, because I didn’t feel like dragging my suitcase and heavy backpack for two hours journey, I ended up spending more for the airport transportation. That’s what happened sometimes with traveling, we just had to accept it and save in other parts of the trip.

I stayed at Babila Hostel & Bistrot and honestly, I had the best time there. I stayed in the 8 beds mixed dorm and I was surprised that the whole room was full. When I was in Barcelona, hostels there were half of capacity because of the pandemic. Apparently in Italy, a month later, it was full capacity for hostels. The hostel used to be a school back in 1800s. It was clean, about 20 minutes walk to the Duomo and city center, and I’ve met some incredible people when I was there.

I didn’t get to go inside the Duomo in Milan because I didn’t want to pay 20 euros to get into a church. I paid for admission to Sagrada Familia in Barcelona & Saint Nicholas in Valencia. I think those were enough money from me to churches. I am an Atheist and I don’t follow specific religion since I graduated high school. I have my own opinions about churches & Christianity that I will save it for a later post.

However, the Duomo in Milan is really gorgeous. I think it’s my favorite Duomo. The area around the Duomo is very commercialized. So many shops are there so people can shop for whatever they need and mostly are shops that available in USA and other parts of Europe (H&M, Zara, Mango, Sephora, etc).

Just right by the Duomo, there’s the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II which is an area with luxury designers shops. The whole area is gorgeous, I’m not a fan of high price luxury brands but I was pretty impressed with how extravagant that whole area is.

Milan is also home to one of the Starbucks Reserve in the world. I think there are six Starbucks Reserve total and it was pretty cool, there’s one in Milan. I am not a big Starbucks drinker but I had to admit, that Starbucks is one of the swankiest Starbucks, I’ve visited in my life. They have area where you can sit down and order food, drinks, and including cocktails! Yes they serve cocktails there. If you are in Milan, you should check it out even if you are not a Starbucks fan.

One of my favorite spots in Milan is the Sforzesco Castle. This Medieval castle was built in the 15th century by Francesco Sforza. It’s free for everyone to visit the castle. I love castles and this one is a pretty good one. Some spots of it, reminded me of Game of Thrones (remember that show that was only good for 5 seasons :)). This is one of must see spots in Milan.

I didn’t ride any public transportation in Milan. It was so convenient to just walk everywhere and my hostel was at a good location where it only took 20-30 minutes walk to places that I wanted to visit. I was averaging about 10-14K steps per day in Milan and I loved every minute of it. Beginning of October was a perfect time to visit Milan because the weather is still warm and it’s a perfect Autumn weather.

Food in Milan are top notch. I had some delicious Pasta, Gelato, Tiramisu, and so much of other delicious food. If you are fans of Jollibee (the Filipino Fried Chicken chain), you will be happy to know that there’s a Jollibee in Milan. It’s a pretty solid Jollibee however, probably it’s better not to go there on the weekend. I went there on the weekend and I couldn’t get any tables so I took mine back to my hostel. Thank God the food survived the 20 minutes walk (what a hard life, I know :P).

I also visited a cat cafe there. There’s this cat cafe called the Crazy Cat Cafe. They served delicious waffles. I had the Roast Beef one and it was excellent. Of course, all of the cats are so adorable. They are just the cutest things and they made me missed my cat, Gizzy (he lives with my ex husband back in Portland). Another a must visit place if you are in Milan.

I hope someday I will be able to come back to Milan. It’s one of my memorable trips.