MikShorty

Where to begin with Milan?  The only things running through my mind were The Last Supper, Cinque Terre (our next stop), how else are we going to keep ourselves occupied in a city for a whole day that neither of us knew much about, The Last Supper, shopping (hello, fashion capital of Italy!), and the Last Supper. Let’s just say a lot more went down and a lot more fun happened than Twinner and I expected in Milan.

On first view, Milan seemed like the NYC of Italy.  Very modern, bustling, etc.  We arrived at around 5 PM on June 11, right after our short trip to Verona, were in awe of the huge train station that strongly reminded me of England for some reason, managed to find the metro station to get to our hotel.  It was at this hotel where we were baffled… none of the lights would work!  After about an hour we found out that the weird thing on our key could be plugged into something by the light switches and… OMG! There was light!

Unsure of what to do that evening, we hopped on the metro and rode up to Repubblica to just wander and see what was around.  We wanted to head one direction, but found out ten minutes later that we were going the opposite direction!  Oops! So we walked down a long way to find dinner… and we found a park on the way!  Like an actual playground park!  We filmed each other swinging and doing stupid things there for a few minutes while we rested our feet.  That was very fun!  After grabbing some food, we hightailed it back to our hotel so we could get up the next morning to go see the Last Supper!

On the 12th, we were up by 9:30, had an awesome breakfast from our hotel (Nutella!), and hit the metro.  However, when we arrived at the location where the Last Supper was, there was a sign that said “Reservation Needed. Booked out for 2 weeks. No openings.”  Least to say, I was extremely upset.  I’m pretty sure a few tears were shed o n my end.  That was my whole reason for coming to Milan.  I posted a very saddened tweet that morning… But I bought a small copy of the painting just so I could have something from it.  If I couldn’t see the real thing, I’d take a small copy.  Not the same, I know, but still.

Looking at our map, Twinner and I decided to make our way to the nearby Parco Sempione where there was a castle that would be cool to check out, passing an international basketball tournament with cute boys galore on the street.  Took some snapshots of the castle and were about to walk in when… what’s that I hear?

ZUMBA music!  For a second, I was like, “Oh, how cool!”  Then I realized the only way a Zumba song would be playing is if an actual Zumba Fitness class were going on.  We walked into the park and discovered that there was a fitness festival of sorts going on!  And under a tent… I found the Zumba class!  I immediately handed all of my stuff to Twinner (she was ok with it) and bolted into that class so fast you would have thought I had to pee or something.  I boogied and Zumba-d my little booty off in my jeans and T-shirt in 86 degree weather with about 100% humidity.  Let’s just say I was soaked within minutes.  But it was soooo worth it!! After the disappointment of The Last Supper, Zumba was the perfect pick-me-up.  The teacher was a guy who could really shake it.  AH! Just sooo much fun.  Twinner and I decided to stick around the park and would have all day if we could have.  We walked around, saw the Arena, watched a Capoeira session where there were girls, a tiny kid, and a couple cute guys doing, and I had my heart intent on doing the second session of Zumba at 2:30.

During Capoeira, I received a text message from my mama.  “How could you miss The Last Supper? You had a reservation! I told you to print it off several times!”  Thus more tears were shed because I was afraid I had missed my opportunity to see one of DaVinci’s most renowned works.  I felt like such an idiot.  In my defense, when I searched my email inbox, I found that I had never even opened that email that had our reservation on it.  It was a different company that we booked through than the other reservations so far so I didn’t think to look up a different company name when printing everything out.  My mom said to play the dumb blonde young American girl card and pull the tears to get in if I needed too.

But I needed my Zumba!  I had missed it so much being in Italy that I said we would go over after I finished dancing… Zeus knows that I needed that stress relief now more than ever before going to try and weasel our way in to see The Last Supper.  After one more sweat-drenching session of Zumba, Twinner and I bolted back to the place that fresco was.  Some weird guy gave us directions when we went down a wrong street and then continued to follow us and talk about something that I don’t even know… it was really weird and creepy.  But we found the church!

After talking to the moderators, they said “Yeah, you had a reservation but it shows that you didn’t come… so we’ll let you go in with the next group that way you didn’t pay for nothing.”  It took all my self-control to not yell “YYYYYYYYEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSS!”  We got in!

When we walked into the highly protected room (think automatic doors around every corner to keep the air surrounding the room as clean as possible), there were several moments where I had to remind myself to breathe.  I spent a good ten minutes just examining every bit of that fresco on the church wall.  I could not imagine an earthquake shattering that painting because it would be such a loss… It should stay around for centuries and centuries.  I loved it! I cannot express how happy I was now that I had seen the whole reason for me wanting to go to Milan.

Leaving the church that time with a lot more joy, Twinner and I moved on southward to the shopping district.  We went into a couple boutiques but we really just wanted to check out the Abercrombie and Fitch flagship that was 4 floors and had over 800 hot employees.  There was a line halfway down the block just to get in!  After seeing the hunk of gorgeousness taking pictures with us normal people, we hopped in line gladly.  We got our picture with the blonde model who told us he was from Hungary (we’re going there next if other Hungarian boys are like him!) and entered the humongous store.

Oh. My. Holy.  It was like my heart couldn’t stand still… there were hot employees EVERYWHERE.  Oh, I was in Heaven.  Seriously, the men in that store were too gorgeous to be allowed.  The store was also like Venice.  We got lost.  I found a shirt I thought was cute, grabbed my size, held it up, and it was a LOT smaller than it should be.  An uber cute employee asked if I needed help, and I asked about the size… he informed me we were in the kids section.  OOPS! Way to embarass myself in front of a major hottie.  As we walked into the adult section, I took another look back at him and he was smiling at me. EEEEE!  So after a few minutes of finding another shirt and contemplating if I wanted to go back and get a picture with him, Twinner and I strode back to the kids section.  I had Twinner ask if I could get a picture with him.  He said sure!  We snapped a shot and talked to him for a few minutes.  He was from Amsterdam.  He told us that nearly every worker there was a model or aspiring model or actor.  And then he gave us his name to add him on Facebook (there were too many people with his name so I couldn’t find him… bummer).  Twinner then decided that she wanted a picture with him too, but a manager was there at that point at said no pictures.  At least I got one earlier.  Now we just hope we didn’t get him into too much trouble.

On our way out, a new model was at the door.  A chocolate model.  *drool* With a gorgeous smile and insanely chiseled abs that I would gladly run my hands down any time of day.  *drool* I stood just looking at him for 5 minutes before asking the cute men at the door if I could get a picture with him since we had already been in the store, shaking my bag in their faces as proof.  They said yes!  So we walked up to mister very yummy chocolate and set down our stuff… Chocolate yumminess grabbed my camera from my stuff and gave it to the girl to take a picture with it along with the normal polaroid shot.  He told us he was from Colombia.  *drool* Then get this… as we were about to pull away from him, he pulled us in momentarily with a “Mmm!” and I just wanted to collapse right then and there.  Looking back at him, he gave us the elevator eyes.  So we liked him and he liked us!  WIN!  Seriously, I just wanted to take him home with me.  And he so wanted me too… Like I’ve said before, curvy girls win.

Ok onto less heart palpitating topics…. whew. Gotta calm myself down now.  I typed that whole part insanely fast in my excitement. =)

After that, we walked around the Dome, saw the main opera theater (stunning!) checking out more shops, seeing drag queens, gay men dressed in speedos and “Make Up 4 Ever” painted on their backs, and the creepy guy who tried giving us instructions earlier.  Dinner was uneventful but at that point we were both soooo exhausted from all of our bustling around that day.  So it was back to the hotel for us.  At the metro, we tried to go down the wrong direction escalator and cute security guards laughed at us.  Girl talk for a while before heading off to bed.  Gotta love girl talk!  Man, I miss that girl now.

Next up is Cinque Terre.  Yes, it will be long just like this one.  Just a forewarning.  Stay tuned!

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Italia 1- Colosseo & Trevi
Italia 2- Angels & Demons
Italia 3- Pt 1: Vaticano
Italia 3- Pt 2: Club Crawl
Italia 4- Toscana Tour
Italia 5- Accademia & Uffizi
Italia 6- Veneziamore
Italia 7- Verona
Italia 8- Milano
Italia 9- Cinque Terre
Italia 10- Ciao Roma!