Italy - Milano - Knock, Knock... Anybody Home?

I didn't have the greatest time in transit getting to Europe. Although I got myself to Bangkok airport relatively hassle free, from there it went downhill. Royal Jordanian Airline tries really hard to please but didn't really meet its potential. First off, despite having massive crowds of people waiting by its desks to check in and get boarding passes, they opted to not open said desks until an hour and a half before the flight was to leave. In the mean time, I had the pleasure of waiting in the pretend line behind a bickering couple, the man of which was riding on a luggage cart because he had purple sunburns on his feet. We're talking serious degree burnage here... I wanted him to seek medical attention because this was above and beyond the call of aloe vera.

By the time I boarded the flight after midnight, I was rewarded with the seat next to the only obese passenger on the plane who decided my window seat leg space equally belonged to him, leading to a good deal of pushing to and fro throughout the night. And who doesn't turn off the plane lights on a nine hour overnight flight?! The main overhead lights remained on the entire trip, making sleep that much more of an elusive goal.



I wasn't a very happy camper arriving in Amman, Jordan at 5am with less than three hours of sleep under my belt. I was an even less happy camper when the signs and pictures in Arabic got me lost outside the transit zone and beyond the immigration desks without a visa or stamp. This entailed explaining I was lost and had not meant to leave the check in area and had no entry stamp to Jordanian security officials with a smattering of English ability at not my finest hour. They were incredibly nice and sorted it out for me despite having no idea what I was talking about most of the time. Note to self... come back to Jordan, they are super nice.

So I arrived in Milan with a lot of mental baggage from the annoyance of the flights, all of which started melting away the second I stepped out into the warm Italian sun. Ah, Italia, you lil charmer you.

But I couldn't help but notice as the shuttle brought us into the impeccably architectured city that most places were closed. Funny, I thought to myself, no one mentioned that Italy observes siesta. Upon arriving at my hostel, I was then informed by the incredibly sweet and helpful host Sara that this time of year, everyone and their mom pack up and head for the coast, leaving about 10 percent of the population to service the tourists. Of those still in the city, there was a very visible presence of African street hawkers, with the typical pitch of here, this bracelet's free for you and then shock when you don't want to buy it. As annoying as the touts can be, in this situation I couldn't help but wonder if some or many of them would be boat people who had made the journey across the Mediterranean and how much choice they had in where they worked. I really haven't seen any Africans in more official job industries around the city... only hawking knockoff bags and jewelry outside the tourist sites.



On the whole, the silence in the city was a bit surreal - the tourists really have the place to themselves. August 15 is Ferie, a national public holiday when everything closes down, so to say it was a quiet stay in Milan is an understatement. I did explore the city with some of my fellow hostel stayers. The Duomo cathedral with its millions of spires and statues jumped out at us when we turned a corner into the main Piazza and as it has just been spiffied up, it was more than a little impressive.



I sucked it up and climbed the whoknowshowmany stairs to the roof, which had great views over the city centre. Afterwards, we toodled through the living room of Milan, the massive Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II shopping arcade, which houses Prada, Louis Vuitton and the fanciest and most out of place McDonald's I've ever seen and the famous La Scala Opera House.



The rest of the afternoon was spent sauntering about with coconut and stracciatella gelati in hand, frolicking and cooling off in the fountain in front of the Sforzesco Castello and people watching in the park. I then attempted to consume a pizza the size of a desk for dinner along the Canal, which was quite a pretty evening walk. All in all, a nice and definitely delicious intro for my time in Europe.