Milan day 1
Posted by ver0n1c4 at 05:14 PM on October 2, 2009.
Almost one month has passed since I chronicled my days in Venice. As you can feel from my entry, I love Venice very much. I am still sad if I remember the fact that the city might "disappear" one day. Anyway life goes on and we moved on to Milan on the following day. We arrived Milan around 3PM in the evening. Since we had planned to stay there for 3 nights, on the journey from Venice to Milan, we planned to upgrade our hotel to the one with air con, whenever possible. So we dropped off from the train at Milano Centrale and quickly fall in love with the city. They have a very nice train station. We get Harry Potter just by being there.
One thing good about travelling by ourselves is we got more confidence in reading map. We don't need to spend so much time to think and ask around. We can quickly find our way. So we headed to the hotel and were happy to found out that we only need EUR7 per night if we want to turn on the air con. Next is to find something to eat. We decided to eat at restaurant nearby who thought us as very weird to ask for meal around that time. Turns out that most restaurant opened during lunck time (around 11 to 2 or 3 at most), closed for siesta (taking a nap), and open again for dinner. The food was fine. The only thing I remember was Merry tried to ask for the bill in Italian, "Il conto, per favore." And the waiter answered in English that we need to go to the counter directly. I can't stop laughing at that time. Even now I am still smiling =P
Next we went to Duomo Subway station as it is said to be the central of the tourist spot. True that the Duomo, which is the biggest church in Milan is there but the Vittorio Emmanuelle Galleria is around there too. And we are a little bit "overdosed" by the churches in previous city. So we literally ignored the church for that reason and also because the shopping mall will close on Sunday but not the Duomo =P (we were there on Friday). We started looking around and found out that the other end of the Galleria leads to Teatro Alla Scala (Theatre Alla Scala). Merry said her book mentioned that it is a shame to miss the show in this theatre while we are in the city. Challenged by this sentence, we headed to the theatre to see the available show. The show for the day was Pink Floyd Ballet show. We then asked around to find out how to get the ticket (It was around 5.40 PM at that day and the show was scheduled at 8PM). We went to the basement store and heard the storekeeper told other tourist that we need to go to subway station to get the ticket for the following day's show. But the counter will only be opened until 6 PM. So we rushed there to try our luck. When we arrived there there was a queue so we joined the queue. Luckily one guy at information counter asked if we were going to watch that night's show and we said yes. He said that the ticket is not sold anymore but we can go back to the theatre and there will be balcony ticket for EUR10 distributed at 6PM and if we were lucky, we will get there in time! So we rushed back to the theatre again, looked around for a while and finally got two queue numbers to get the tickets! It was an exciting experience and it was all because it is a shame to miss the show 
So we waited until 6PM when they called our number one by one. While waiting we were thinking if we will have enough time to go back to hotel, get changed, and go back to catch the show in time. We really needed to get change because we both were in shorts! We calculated that we will get the ticket around 6.30PM. From Duomo subway station to the station nearest to our hotel will take 10-15 minutes. From there to the hotel, we need to walk for around 20-25 minutes. So we only have around 10 minutes to get changed! I was thinking would it be better if I just go to some stores and buy decent dress. But this is Milan... no cheap stores! I will be more or less broke if I have to buy new dress. When thinking about that, we finally got our ticket. It was even cheaper... EUR7.5 each. Because we got the seat at balcony 2 ha ha ha. Ok time to rush back to hotel. We walked super fast and found out that it took much faster when we do something with determination =P So we arrived back at the theatre just in time. We even had some time to buy some drinks at McDonald.
Our seat turns to be at the top and left most corner =P we can even easily take a picture of the lamp at the center of the hall. Here are some pictures before the show. The ballet was ok for me. Ok to be honest, I can't find a way to appreciate it. I got excited only when Merry said something and I got most excited when she said it finished LOL. So I can't find a way to describe the show here. We then headed home around 9.30PM. The sky was still bright and I can even take some picture in front of the Duomo.
xoxo McJuicy