Little Feet Round the World: Europe Trip

Milan is a metropolitan city. Milan is the city of fashion. Milan is the second most populous city in Italy. Milan is the centre of industry and finance of Italy.

Milan was the capital of Western Roman Empire in the year of 286 AD. Milan was declared as the capital of Kingdom of Italy during the conquer of Napoleon Bonaparte. Milan started to prosper upon completion of railway structure in late 1800 to early 1900. Milan is the leading city of Italy until now.

We reached Milan Centrale Station around midnight. We then walked to the hotel that we have booked, Esco Hotel. According to the map, we saw the hotel was located just across the road in front of the station, but we overshot the entrance due to not-prominent signage.

The hotel is a small and friendly hotel and it looked new. So, we were happy enough to be here although it is only 1-storey hotel.

The next day, we split force because the girls want to do some shopping and the guys want to go to see the legendary San Siro Stadio. San Siro Stadio is located further from Centrale so the guys went out from the hotel earlier.

After having breakfast and checking out from the hotel, we walked back to Centrale and brought the one-way metro ticket for EUR 1.5 (~SGD 2.5). We took the metro (yellow line) from Centrale to Duomo.

We reached the oldest shopping mall in the world, Galleria Vittorio Emanuelle II. It was named after the first king of Kingdom of Italy and was completed in 1877. It is located in front of Milan Cathedral and it has two arcades that converge in an octagonal shape dome.

Gallerie Vittorio Emanuelle II

The entrance arch

The arcades

There were many luxury shops and some restaurants in the building. There is also a department store called Renaissance that practically sells almost every brand. We spent our time to shop until we were scheduled to meet the guys again at 12:30 pm.

We had difficulty finding each other because there were so many people in the piazza. Thanks to the free wifi, we managed to meet in the end. Due to time constraint, as we need to catch the train to Lucerne, we crossed out our itinerary to climb to the top of Milan Cathedral.

Milan Cathedral took almost 600 years to complete. This gothic church is the largest in Italy and was completed on the order of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1805. He was crowned the King of Italy in this church.

Napoleon promised that the funding to complete the church would come from the French but eventually it was never paid. However, still thanks to Napoleon that the facade of the church could be up till today. As a form of gratitude, Napoleon's statue was put atop one of the spires.