Forza Milan

Before I get to talking about Milan, let me talk about the unusual wake up call I had the morning we were to leave Venice. At around 5:37am, an ungodly-loud alarm that sounds like one of those World War II air raid alarms--you know, the ones that tell you to get underground or whatever--goes off for a solid five minutes, with a number of beeps afterwards. Typical American tourist as I am, I simply dismiss it, reassuring myself that is indeed not 1942 and there will be no bombing.

The train that we'd like to catch leaves for Milan at 8:15am. We left with a 25 minute cushion, which was ample as the train station was about 1.5 kilometers away, and the first kilometer hugged the canal. Therein lied the problem. Unbeknownst to us, that alarm that sounded actually indicates when the canals have flooded. We walked out of our hostel and saw before us no less than eight inches of water covering the sidewalk in every direction. I drifted out a few yards to see if it clears up at any point, and it didn't, of course. All these Venetians, clad in their knee-high rain boots or thigh-high galoshes, were staring at the Americans, one wearing low top boat shoes, the other, plain leather boots. We thought we would be resourceful and luck out by wrapping plastic bags around our shoes, but that lasted for the first ten feet or so. After that, we just forded the river like a team of oxen in Oregon Trail. By the time we got to the train station, we missed the 8:15 train and we were completely soaked from the knee down. I didn't take pictures out of sheer frustration. Screw you, Venice.

Milan:

The next train left at 8:50, we arrived at Milan and fortunately for us it was not raining there. We actually only booked one night in Milan (we originally scheduled three); much to our surprise it was just too expensive to stay there. Our places was about 28 Euros per night, and outside of that, places averaged around 40 Euros plus per night. We still got to seeing some stuff, though, and we only had one goal in mind: go see AC Milan play football.

En route to buying our tickets, we happened upon this enormous horse statue at the horse tracks right by the soccer stadium. It's designed off a drawing by Da Vinci:

Cool. Moving right along, we hopped back on the metro and went to one of the few things either of us wanted to see in Milan, Il Duomo:

It sticks out like a sore thumb in Milan; this thousand-year-old cathedral in the center of a bustling and modern square. There's a huge thirty foot plasma big screen to the right of it, at the time we were there it was showing Italian rugby.

Directly adjacent to the Duomo is the shopping plaza. Basically a bunch of overpriced designer label stores. Part of the Milan experience is walking by a store and being jeered at by the fictitiously made-up women inside the stores, showering contempt over you as they're aware you have no intent on buying a $4,000 purse. They say Milan is the fashion center of the world, and a brief stroll through the plaza would probably confirm that.

This is the roof to the plaza. It looks pretty.

Now, time for the good stuff. We bought tickets for AC Milan versus Reggina, Saturday the 7th at 8:30pm. We were there about three hours early so we had some time to kill. Probably one of the most fun pregames I've had: we fought through the pissing rain and found a supermarket, bought a 1.5 liter bottle of Riunite Lambrusco (the real classy stuff, 3 Euros for the bottle), found a McDonald's relatively close to the stadium, bought some small drinks, and parked it upstairs and poured wine into the cups when people weren't looking.  We then strolled to the stadium, San Siro:

Yep, that's me double-fisting two small McDonald's cups of Lambrusco. I rule.

Next stop was actually inside the stadium. I like the setup: the fans are protected from the overhang, but the field is still rained on. I enjoyed not being in the rain for once and welcomed the reprieve (I was still a little bitter towards Venice).

From directly where we sat:

During pregame, Ronaldinho doing some sweet ball tricks:

During some footballing action, an AC Milan free kick:

Reggina, at the time, was the worst team in Italian Serie A. AC Milan was in 2nd place (to Inter Milan). Reggina scored first, but let me tell you, those AC Milan fans were as unphased as if the score was still 0-0. The atmosphere at the game is nothing short of unreal. The people in the blue section are screaming the entire game, singing songs, when there's a bad call by the refs people charge the gate behind the goal and scream even more, all the fans around us are cursing the hell out of the refs, the Reggina players, and bad plays by the AC Milan team (which were few). The game was tied on a Kaka penalty shot. Hey P Sir, I saw Ronaldinho, Kaka, Pato, David Beckham (!), and Sedorf all on the field at the same time. Sup?

Above, me in our seats after the game as the fans piled out (it ended in a draw, 1-1, and it was on the front page of every Milan newspaper the next day).

I wouldn't have been opposed to staying longer in Milan but I have a budget to mind. I just wasn't thrilled about how expensive it was to stay there. Nonetheless, I had an absolute blast at the football game (it's amazing how much more exciting they are in person as opposed to on TV) and wouldn't really say a lot of bad things about Milan, but then again I wouldn't say it was my favorite place in Italy, either.

What I probably should have realized is that I was going to Switzerland next... and I wasn't really in any position to start complaining about how expensive things are...

More updates to come.