My thoughts on the Derby are gonna have to wait. I can't even get myself to write about it yet. I'm super mad that we lost but it was an amazing experience nonetheless. More to come about the Derby.
I woke up feeling super super refreshed. I slept a full 8 hours for the first time in what seems like forever.
I had to hurry up and get ready because my hotel breakfast was only available until 10:30. I woke up at like 9:15AM, checked my email and saw that I was able to check in to my flights. Normally I'm much more on top of checking in to my flights ASAP, but the emotions from the Derby caught me slippin.
By the time I had finished checking into my flights, showering, and getting ready, it was 10:15AM. I scurried downstairs and had breakfast.
On that note, this hotel is amazing. It's probably the best hotel I've stayed in this whole trip. The breakfast is really good. It's close enough to San Siro to walk. The room is great. Shower and bed are great. Wifi is great. There's a really good chance that I'll come back to this hotel.
The one negative about this hotel (and it's a pretty big negative) is it isn't that close to a train station. It's not ridiculously far, but it's not close at all. More on that later in this post.
I didn't have any plans on doing anything crazy today. The main focus is preparing for my early ass flight tomorrow. I figured I could use today to get a good souvenir for this trip.
I've already gotten a couple of souvenirs. I got a Milan jacket and scarf. I got some magnets. One for me, one for my supervisor, and one for my coworker who's covering for me while I'm gone. I got some good Sennheiser headphones to replace the Sennheiser headphones that my sister gave me years ago (thanks Jamie! Lol). I think her ex gave them to her and she just wanted nothing to do with them. Those headphones finally broke while I was in Munich.
But fuck it! What's one more souvenir? I'm in Milan, arguably the fashion capital of the world. Why not be fake bourgie and get some high fashion shit!?
I walked to the nearest metro station. The ticket machine broke when I used it, which was annoying. I spent a solid five minutes trying to get it to fix itself and give me my money back. Five minutes is an eternity when you're at those machines. Thankfully there wasn't a long behind me or I would have just committed seppuku, lol.
I'm glad the machine broke because I decided to just walk the 45 minutes to the high fashion stores. I walked through Sempione Park and Castello Sforzeco, two places which I wanted to go to but wasn't motivated enough to actually go to. I'm glad I did though.
I arrived at Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, one of the rich shopping areas. It's this cool indoor mall right next to the Duomo. It sounds and looks cool but it's mostly high end fashion brands and overpriced touristy restaurants. I looked through wallets at Gucci, Prada, and Louis Vuitton. That idea was really dumb. It was like €310-€320 for a wallet with a brand name on it. I'll never understand high fashion.
I beat rush hour and got back to my hotel. It's a bit surreal to know that this trip is ending, but it does feel great that I'll be coming back to my regular, every day life. I don't think I'd be able to handle traveling like this for an extended period of time. I'll give a write up on things I've learned this trip in another post.
I started the packing process and prepared for restaurants to open again. That's one thing about Italy. You can find a restaurant from noon to 3:00PM, but almost all of them close for riposo (siesta) until 7:00PM.
When 7:00PM came, I went back to this pizza spot that wasn't bad. They were pretty American friendly. They let you order to go and they even sliced the pizzas for you.
Now I'm back at my hotel room, bullshitting and getting ready for tomorrow's flights.
This is where it gets tough. Milan Malpensa is pretty far away. Far enough that ubering or taxiing is too expensive to be an option. FlixBus is super cheap but I'm afraid of hitting traffic.
I'd prefer to take a train because trains aren't affected by traffic, but Google maps wants me to take a local train and transfer to another train. The problem is the second train takes off 3 minutes after my first train arrives. In those three minutes I would have to get off, find the ticket machine, buy my ticket, find the right platform, and get onto the train. I'd actually I only have two minutes to make all of that happen, because train doors close one minute before departure.
So I'm kind of screwed. I've decided to walk from my hotel to the train station that Google maps wanted me to transfer at. My flight starts boarding at 7:15AM so the last train that could get me to the airport on time leaves at 6:14AM. It'll take me 33 minutes to walk there, maybe more considering I'm carrying everything I have on my back.
It will save me a little bit of money from buying that first train ticket. It'll take more time but it's more of a sure thing. I'm going to get less sleep but that's okay, I can deal with that. I've slept in for almost all of this trip, lol. I'll probably get some sleep on the transatlantic flight anyway.
It's 11:40PM and I'm still up. Got my alarm clock set for 4:30AM. WISH ME LUCK, BOYS!
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