Over the course of this first week, Milan has proven to be better than I ever imagined. From the fascinating works we’ve studied, to even the streets we walk every day, nothing seems to even have the capability of “getting old.”
My experience of getting into Milan began with a little bit of a bumpy start. Although Kate and I were able to figure out how to navigate the train from the airport, from that point forward, we were on our own. As we frantically searched the Metro for clues, we may as well have been trying to read signs made from a completely different alphabet. We found our way to the kiosk to buy tickets, but we only had one problem: we didn’t know where we were trying to go. Regardless, we hopped in line and tried our best. As the line piled up behind us, a kind woman who did not speak a word of English tried to help us out. She ended up buying the tickets for us and we paid her back.
We took our tickets and hopped on the train we thought we were told to get on, but when we got out, we had no idea which street to take to get to our hotel. After walking around in the pouring rain for hours, with the help of Google maps, we finally got to our hotel.
The next day I was overwhelmingly relieved when we got to IES and were finally with people who knew what they were doing.
I was nervous about being in a completely new place, but going to the top of the Duomo and being able to see such amazing past and contemporary design makes me excited to continue experiencing it all.