Milan was the next stop on my Eurotrip.
The main purpose of me travelling to Milan was to go and see the Formula 1 over the weekend. I've been watching or following the F1 since I was a lil kid and the opportunity to go and actually watch a race live whilst in Europe was something not to be missed. Luckily for me, the F1 was going to be in Monza and my travelling buddies Gav and Christina also like machines that go around a race track fast!! After a very eventful delay for Gav who was flying into Milan from London where his flight was delayed 3 times we spent the day before the F1 wandering around the city. Milan the city is not very big at all, it's main attraction besides all the fashion shows is the Duomo. This massive cathedral is the biggest of its kind in terms of Gothic architecture and the 4th largest cathedral in the world. To be honest the cathedral was kind of creepy looking with all those gargoyles sitting on the outside but nonetheless is was great to see some interesting architecture and artwork that has stood the test of time.
Roll on the morning of the F1, I got all decked out in my Ferrari gear and we jumped on a train with a whole stack of other ppl who were all decked out in F1 team gear. Monza is about 15kms north of the city and is easily accessible by train. I was very excited that I had the chance to go to F1 and especially the Italian Grand Prix since it's Ferrari's home GP. In preparation for the F1 I hit up the Ferrari store the day before to deck myself out in Ferrari gear. The store has every conceivable Ferrari merchandise thinkable, there was even a Ferrari engine for sale if you have some spare cash lying around.
We arrived in Monza and the town has the F1 weekend logistics working like clockwork. Right from the moment we arrived at the train station, there were buses ready to transport us to the track. Once at the track we had a fairly decent walk to the entrance but you could hear the scream of the engines in the distance which made me more excited about being there. We had prepurchased our tickets online and had to collect them before entering the track. Once we grabbed out tickets we had a bit of a wander through the merchandise section where every major F1 team had their own stand selling their team merchandise.
We found ourselves a decent vantage point which was at the beginning of the braking zone on the last corner with a big screen behind us and we settled in for the start of the race. Having not been to a live race I knew the cars would be loud but didn't expect them to be LOUD. Just the roar of the engine during their warm up was enough to make you deaf, luckily we were supplied ear plugs when we picked up our tickets.
Watching a race live can get quite boring as the cars are going at break neck speeds that in an instance all the cars go flying by and then you sit and wait for them to pass around on the next lap. The race was a standard affair with a few crashes at the beginning and Ferrari's Fernando Alonso pulling a quick pit stop to get out infront of Jenson Button to win the race which sent the Ferrari fans wild.
Once the race finished we high tailed it out of there so that Gav could catch his flight out of Milan back to London. Chris and I headed back to the apartment but not without our own pitstop at Rugatino which was this popular cafe which we had tried to get into the previous 2 nights. It was a case of 3rd time lucky when we made a reservation and were the first customers in the cafe. We're not sure if it was normal but since we were the first customers in the cafe we thought we'd eat early and then get out of there....WRONG. We ordered our meals and then proceeded to wait and wait and wait for our meals. The cafe continued to fill up and we were still waiting for our food. We were served bread not once but TWICE and our wine but still no food, other tables who had arrived after us were being served their food before us. We didn't say anything or really mind for that matter cos we didn't know if it was 'normal' for Italians to have long meals plus we had tried 2 times previously to get in to this cafe I guess we wanted to make our visit worthwhile. When the food finally arrived we weren't disappointed, I think there was a reason why this cafe was fully booked each night we walked past...the food was DELISH and it was probably the best meal we had or tasted for the whole time we were in Milan.
Besides the F1, Milan city is all about fashion. All the high end fashion brands are there and it seems that if you go to Milan you are there to SHOP. Besides shopping we also visited a castle and went through a museum that was attached to it which had alot of Italian artwork. Milan ended up being my least favourite city of the ones I'd travelled to. If the F1 wasn't there I probably would have only stayed there for an even shorter time.
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