Milan Travel Diary

You know when you plan a trip for months and you are so excited the night before that you can’t sleep, yeah well that was my exact feeling the night before boarding my flight to Milan, the city bursting with culture, fashion and food and I just couldn’t wait to explore the length and breath of the business capital of Milan.

Arriving into Milan I caught glimpse of the Duomo di Milano Cathedral from our car and I was immediate in love and I knew straight away that this trip was going to be amazing. Our hotel was a short walk from the Duomo, we stayed at the Hotel Brunelleschi which we picked because of its perfect location, its central to all the sites and is surrounded by some lovely restaurants and bars. I would recommend this hotel to anyone wanting to visit Milan and wants a central hotel to avoid having to spend half their trip catching trams and the Metro.

 We woke up early for our first day in Milan, we headed into Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II which is Italy’s oldest shopping mall and is a major landmark in Milan,  which is where the flagship store of Prada is found along with many other designer boutiques as well as a number of restaurants. We browsed the stores and grabbed a gelato from the famous Savini shop which is in the Galleria, it is defiantly worth trying. For more shopping we headed to one of the most expensive streets in Italy: Via Montenapoleone, this is Milan's golden triangle and its answer to the Champs Elysees and is the must-see destination for luxury shopping. I was in my element as we spent most of the morning browsing the boutiques. 

We had been recommended by people to visit Navigli canal which is a 45 minute walk from the Duomo and is a man-made canal which is the heart of Milan nightlife, lining the canal is a vast range of bars, restaurants and nightclubs which comes alive each evening filled with locals and tourists. We went on the afternoon so it was rather quite as a lot of the bars only open on a evening but we sat at one by the canal and enjoyed a traditional Italian wine-based cocktail called Spritz Veneziano. 

For our second day in Milan we started off by visiting the Duomo di Milano Cathedral, where we got to see inside the cathedral which was very impressive as well as going underground to see remains of building from Ancient Rome which was destroyed by architect in the early 60’s. as well as going inside the Duomo we also climbed up the stairs to the roof top of the cathedral where we had a panoramic views of Milan, this was very impressive. We took a walk up to the Sforza Castle which is located close to a park which is where the Triennale design museum is located, we visited this museum because I wanted to see all the contempory art, it was a really interesting museum as the exhibitions featured designs through the decades and showing how designing products have changed through the century.

For our last day in Milan we headed to the Armani/Silos fashion museum dedicated to Giorgia Armani’s collection from the 1980’s to the present, the museum is located in the fashionable Tortona area of Milan. It was up there with one of my favourite museums I have ever visited because I love seeing clothing from the collections from the previous decades because I am a huge fan of Armani’s work in the fashion industry. The architecture alone was a reason to visit, it is renovated building that was constructed in 1950 as a granary for the Nestlé company. I total of 4500 square meters is spread out over four floors, holding exhibition space, café/bar as well as digital archive as well as the main space.I would recommend visiting if you are a fashion lover like myself.