Sunday 7 August
After our adventures in Rome, we began our interrailing adventure! We purchased the 5 travel days in one month pass, getting First Class ones and being Fancy Motherfuckers (cos Second class was sold out). The price difference wasn’t huge, and the seats were bigger and more spacious, so that was nice.
First Class was only really of any advantage in Italy – otherwise it was just a more expensive second class with slightly bigger seats.
In Italy, first class comes with free drinks – yes I’ll have the prosecco please – and an espresso machine on wheels. Totally worth it.
Another main difference between First and Second class tickets is access to charging ports – not so much this trip but when we took the train from Munich to Passau it was only the first class section that had charging ports.
This will feature much more in coming posts but when you’re traveling with an Interrail pass it is important to note that this tickets gets you on the TRAIN but it doesn’t necessarily get you A SEAT.
Italy is very explicit about this, and through the Interrail app you can connect with the Italian National train service and book your tickets. Other countries… are less explicit about this. And this had…CONSEQUENCES.
Anyway – Milan.
We enjoyed our 3 hour air-conditioned First Class ride from Rome to Milan. From Milano Centralo, we transferred out to where we were staying.
Sabrina, one of the housekeepers from the family I worked with, and her partner Alex met us at the station near their house. After settling in, we headed out for a lovely dinner at SignorVino (a chain of wine tasting restaurants – why is this not a thing in more places!??!) near the city centre, looking out over the lovely Navigli night market along the canal.
We finished our evening admiring the cathedral in all its lit up glory, and a very bougie shopping mall that has a bull mosaic that brings you luck if you spin around on its balls.
Sure, Italy, I’ll take any excuse to be a ball breaker.
The public transport in Italy is amazing – frequent, starts early, finishes late, goes pretty much everywhere with delightful frequency, and is very affordable. How public transport should be.
We took the subway back to Sabrina and Alex’s place, and dossed down for the night.
Monday, 8 August
Early the next morning, we missioned to Milano Central station, dropped our bags at a left luggage place (that we pre-booked so didn’t suffer the same disappointment as Rome), and then cabbed to where our cycling tour was starting as we’d lingered too long having cappucinos and chats with Sabrina.
Our cycling tour was a gaggle of 30 or so people from across Europe and America, and we proceeded to follow our enigmatic guide to forest tower apartment blocks where she explained how they had been created to be like a vertical forest, and how they’d turned the dodgy side of town into a bougie bar district, and it was now a lot safer by creating green spaces where there’s amenities underground (shops, pharmacies etc), and lovely park spaces above ground, so it’s quiet and lush.
They were truly beautiful. I think Jared fell in love with Milan at that moment.
We saw a beautiful statue of Napoleon’s face on Mars’ – the god of war – body, and saw his arc du triomph Milan style.
We walked our bikes through the medieval Sforzesco Castello, with impressive moats, and generally beautiful. Wish we’d had time to linger longer.
Our guide also took us to what used to be a canal, and it now a cycle track, showing us photos of people swimming in it.
We saw a church that used to be outside the city walls, and talked about the symbols showing that it was a Christian nation and how churches were a display of wealth and power.
Our tour guide goes “Now, I know we have some people from the Southern Hemisphere in the group who are probably ABC travellers – I can see you inwardly rolling your eyes because we’ve stopped at another church.” I chortled because I had just written a blog post about this very thing.
After cycling around in the sun for three beautiful hours in balmy 29 degree heat, we headed back to the station, grabbed our bags, and found our train to Venice.
