(Too Sexy for) Milan

OK, the title's clearly not true, but the stupid song has been in my head since I got here, and I couldn't resist.

Right before I left Edinburgh, Jody and I watched an episode of The Ricky Gervais Show in which Karl Pilkington said that if he could be any nationality, he'd be Italian, because it's so much more of a laid-back lifestyle. In England everyone's rushing around, but in Italy you can sit outside a café all day and nobody thinks it's at all strange.

Maybe that's why I'm not loving it here. I don't want to sit outside cafés all day. I like rushing around. When I first started travelling, I didn't have a lot of money, so I did it as cheaply as possible. I'd go out and walk around seeing the sights that didn't charge admission, and all my food would come from the supermarket. Or maybe some cheap takeaway, but I'd never spend time sitting around a restaurant, lazing over a meal. And it suited me. It's how I still like to travel. Maybe it's just habit, but I think it's more that it's just how I am. I may stay in nicer hotels now, but I still eat on the cheap, and I'll still only pay for admission to something I really want to see, which isn't much.

So Italy, I'm just not that into you. I don't want to go out to a café for proper coffee, I just want a quick cup of instant in my hotel room, to give me enough caffeine to start the day. I don't want to sit around slowly eating a big meal and sipping wine for hours, I just want to grab something and get on my way. And I want to walk quickly, to get to my destination, not take a leisurely stroll down the road like I've nowhere to be, and no one behind me does either. Also, when I went looking in my guidebook for places to visit in Milan, I immediately noticed that everything costs money. The Last Supper is a must see; it's amazing! It costs 8 Euro and you can only get in by booking in advance or taking an official tour. Nope. Thumbs down. I get why people love taking their vacations here, but it's so not me. My favourite cities in the world are London and New York, and this is pretty much the exact opposite of those places.

Which means that I didn't find much I wanted to see here, and nothing that I felt like paying for. It didn't leave me a whole lot of sightseeing to do.  So with the sad realisation that Italy and I want totally different things from a Saturday, today I slept late, and then took the subway to the Duomo, because it's evidently the main thing to see in Milan. And it was gorgeous. And surrounded by lots of other great photo-worthy stuff. But I could barely move in the square from all the football fans crowded into it.

Fans, fans everywhere

Turns out Milan is hosting the Champions League Final tonight, between Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid. I love some good football fanaticism, and don't grudge these folk supporting their teams in such a big game. For about 3 minutes it was fun watching them wave flags and sing all their football songs. But then it became less fun. Because I couldn't go anywhere without running into scads of them, blocking the passage ways, taking in bottle after bottle of booze, and constantly increasing the volume of their singing. In every public space. I'm staying right by the Central Station, and needed to catch the subway there... but the square in front of it is hosting a celebration for the big game and swarming with drunk people. The subway cars were all crammed with shouting, laughing, singing dudes in their team tops. The Piazza del Duomo was an official fan zone, packing them in shoulder to shoulder despite the massiveness of the area.

I tried walking a few blocks away from the Duomo where there's a lot of shopping, but there was no let up of the crowds, and I'd had enough of the sun and 29 degree heat. So I made my way back to my nicely air conditioned hotel room, and am now trying to determine what to do with my evening.


If nothing else, the game'll probably be on TV...