I spent most of yesterday at the conference. I'm here for work, after all. I also got to meet up with my high school classmate last night for dinner. Honestly I'm pretty moved. The two times I visited Italy, he'd always came to meet up, no matter how far away I was. Even though it has been 10 years since we last met, it still brought us right back to high school times! Hopefully next time it won't be another 10 years!
My friend introduced me to the aperitif custom in Milan, which is essentially happy hour. As long you pay for the drinks, you get a light appetizer buffet for free. We went to a pretty popular local place called Noon, it was packed with afterwork Milanese. On the way back to the hotel, we passed by a chocolate store that also sold gelato, so of course we had to stop for some desserts. I got pistachio & papaya flavors, while the pistachio was top notch, it overpowered the delicate papaya one. I'll stick to nut gelatos next time!
I woke up this morning with a sore throat and stuffy nose, but there's sightseeing to be done! My talks don't start until late morning, so off I went to the park nearby. The shady walkway only had a few occasional joggers, I had the lovely sunshine and views all to myself.
I soon ended up in Castello Sforzesco, a medieval fortress which now houses a museum. But since I had limited free time, I just walked around the courtyard and soaked up some much needed sunshine.
There was a special exhibit of colorful birds going on. Some how they don't really fit in to the surroundings.
North of the Castello is the humongous and picturesque Parco Sempione, about 386,000 sq meters. Unfortunately I'm now getting rather close to the start time of the talks I want to attend, so I had to rush through all the sights. The whole time I was in the park, my thoughts ranged from: "hurry hurry or I'll be late!" to "oh my god this is beautiful I need to take pictures...".
After a long day at the conference, I got a much needed break with former colleagues, who decided to have dinner together by the Milan Cathedral. Although it's closed for the day, the sight was still quite stunning. Unfortunately the square before it was my least favorite part of the Milan visit, because it was filled with aggressive hawkers who wouldn't take no for an answer and insisted on stuffing bird food for the pigeons into our hands.
We escaped into the galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, one of the world's oldest shopping malls, now filled with the usual high end brand name stores.
We randomly picked a restaurant. I had no expectations for food in touristy areas, but this scallop risotto turned out delicious.
We also had Milanese specialty: osso bucco & risotto Milanese. Friend's roast chicken & seafood pasta were also quite good. All in all, a decent experience in a touristy restaurant. Although we did have a rather strange argument with the waiter and eventually the manager, who refused to give us multiple copies of the check so we can get reimbursed at our individual institutions. Not sure why they were so adamant about it...but oh well.
I don't know what is it with the Europeans, but they sure know how to light their buildings for the most beautiful effects!
