Monday, October 7, 2013

Abito a Milano

I've been living in Milan for about two months now, and I put off writing about it because I've done very little touristy stuff. Two months in I've still done very little touristy stuff but I thought I'd best write something.
For anyone who is not up to date with my two official reasons for travelling this year; one was to work at Disney and the other was to study in Milan.
I'm up to part two!
I'd actually been living in Milan sporadically for the month of August, in between Bardonecchia, Sicily and the Balkans, but I was so excited to have a house that I promptly unpacked and did nothing.
I didn't explore the city.
I didn't explore my neighbourhood.
I made banana loaf between attempting to teach myself Italian and catching up on TV shows and ate the whole thing myself. It was a wonderful time. My only outings were to the supermarket or the airport/bus station to leave to city.
The first time I properly explored was with Eleanor, when she came to stay for a couple of days after Croatia. So I suppose I'll show you some photos of that!

The Duomo (Cathedral) - basically the centerpiece of Milan. The city extends out from it in a circle. 


 Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II - opened in 1867 - 20 years before the Eiffel Tower. The designer, Mengoni, fell to his death from it just days before it opened. 


On the ground in the galleria are mosaics representing Milan (red cross on white field), Rome (she-wolf), Florence (iris) and Turin (a bull). For some reason, spinning on the bull's testicles is said to bring good luck. I've heard that this is legitimate and also that it is a tourist trap. Who knows. It's free anyway, so we gave it a whirl. The mosaic has actually been worn through from all the spinners over the years. 



This is Leonardo Da Vinci, who I thought looked like Dumbledore the first time I saw the statue. Can you see the resemblance?

Some gelato. 

It is a castle. With towers!


E is a pianist and had some fun with these oddly shaped instruments in the Music Museum. 



To be honest, my first proper month in Milan kind of sucked. I'd been travelling for 8 months without many problems, and I was finally settling down!
But not in my city, not at my school, and not with my friends. Suddenly, I got very, very homesick. My friends can attest to this with late night puppy eyed snapchats and facebook demands for attention. My mother was suddenly receiving loving emails, and calls to skype soon and tell me news from home (obviously I'm a bad daughter since this was a change!) Things didn't progress so well from there. One of my classes is almost purely economics rather than law (there is a very good reason why I don't study math-based subjects), I'm not quite interested in the booze-bus exchange student ride, so I didn't seem to fit, my computer died temporarily right as I had an assignment to work on (I read 150 pages of cases on my phone) and to top it off I got food poisoning.
Not the best month I've ever had.
However, September is over, my computer is fixed, I finished my assignment and I can keep food down now! My friends only occasionally get needy messages and that's largely because I haven't seen them for 9 months (with the exceptions of M, E and P) - I could have had a baby and they wouldn't know it! (Mum, I haven't).
So everything is about on track and I have more adventures planned. Anyway, here is a collection of photos of things I've been up to since I've been here.

Wellington is on the map! Outside my school in Milan. Theo is also a student from Wellington so equally excited. Something I've noticed i unique to people from small countries - we get really excited whenever our country/town is mentioned anywhere. I have photos of "NZ Mussels" signs in the States. 
 We all took a Milan day trip instead of going to Lake Como and had a spin on the poor bull.
Nic

Aleks

Theo really got into it!


Alex

Kenneth

Vicente

His best Milan model pose

Cocktail night with Roise

About to head out for a few more cocktails



The Kiwis in Milan!!

Disney Princess Hands


Group dinner

Duomo by night
 I also popped along to Vogue Fashion's Night Out during fashion week. I was not prepared for how crazy it was. It was about 9pm when we got there and it was insanely crowded. We even lost Alex a couple of times!

Live models

Afro guy

These two got model scouted - what do you think of their model faces? Rosie got scouted too but was less keen on a photo to celebrate!

A giant pitcher of something delicious. Alex is peeping over my head and the guy on the left is a random. 

Rosie and Vicente in Louis Vuitton

Inside Ralph Lauren - marble staircase, deer antlers and gilt framed paintings. 

I don't remember where these are from but aren't they amazing? And terrifying. And amazing. And probably about 
€3000. 


There were also balloons at fashion week!


I have no idea why this place was so busy - I didn't brave the crowd to find out!
This is my house! 

This is a fish, kiwifruit and anchovy pizza that I tried. 

Pizza dinner with my landlord. 

Gelato on the road to Bardonecchia. 

Feeling classy in Milan - blogging about Dublin, with flowers, chilled glass of wine and pasta... out of a pot. 

This is a devil automaton in the Castello Museum. 

Awesome cutlery which I want and which is unfortunately in a museum. 

Three-headed guitar/lute/banjo/I don't know but it has strings. 

What happens when guitars and harps have a little too much mead. 

I don't even know how to caption this one. 
E and I attempting 'guilt stares' for my post on The Art of Hitching - it did not get included in the final cut for obvious reasons. 

Julian with his new Flower Pug school book

The result of some of my demands for attention. It was very appreciated!

The canals in Navigli - which as far as I can tell is kind of the casual bar/student area of Milan. At least, we've adopted it as such. 

Europe really takes biophililic cities to a new extreme. 

Group dinner - homemade this time. 
Ciao for now and I'll be back soon to tell you all about Morocco!

2 comments:

  1. Nina,
    This all looks terribly exciting! :) My favourite parts are you eating the banana bread and catching up on tv haha and "Duomo by night" how beautiful.
    Love Keenan

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Duomo is crazy intricate! And I very much enjoyed watching TV and eating banana bread at the time. I've actually just baked some more so...

      Delete