Day 10: Verona, City of Love

Today we departed Milan again, this time for the City of Love, Verona. Again, I slept on the train ride, but I woke up just in time to see the beautiful countryside. There were fields of green as far as the eye can see, and after being in Milan and Florence for over a week, it was refreshing to see nature like that again.

When we got to Verona, we dropped our bags off at our hotel and went out to get lunch. I went to a tiny cafe near the hotel, where I got something similar to a puff pastry but with spinach inside instead of a dessert filling. After lunch, we went on a walking tour of Verona. Despite being one of the biggest tourist destinations in Italy, Verona is a very small city. It is protected by water on two sides and by a fort on the other two. I think its most impressive feature is the arena, which is like the Colosseum in Rome, but smaller and more in tact. It is a popular concert venue, which I thought was really cool. Many of the streets of the city, including the street with all the shops, had different colored marble, which our tour guide pointed out a little too many times.

It wouldn't be a trip to Verona without seeing the houses of Romeo and Juliet, so of course, we had to visit them. Romeo's home was tucked away in one of the quietest streets of the city, but Juliet's home, our last stop on the tour, was the real attraction and was packed with people. To get to Juliet's balcony, we walked through a little tunnel where the walls were covered with the names of couples that would immortalize their love by writing their name on the wall. I couldn't help but wonder if they were all still in love. Past the tunnel, we could see Juliet's balcony. On the walls were the letters to Juliet and locks with more couples' names. There was also a statue of Juliet that gives you good luck if you touch her right breast, so we obviously all jumped at the opportunity.

After the tour ended, we walked around on our own for a bit, where I got the most amazing gelato. They let me get as many flavors as I wanted, and then they shaped the gelato to look like a rose in my cone and it was so beautiful that I almost didn't want to eat it. After walking around and shopping, we found a place for dinner, where I had carbonara.

A few hours later, a few friends and I wanted to explore Verona at night, so we all met up and walked around the city some more. We ended up finding a bar to just chill at and talk. The bar had a big chalkboard so we wrote "Plus 3" on it. We also had a few encounters with the most persistent street vendors; they actually came inside the bar to try and sell us stuff. We ended up staying at the bar for only an hour or so, because the guy at the hotel front desk told us that he would be locking the doors at 1AM (he basically gave us a curfew), so we had to head back so we could get back to the hotel.

Day 9: Pizzeria 40 and Milan Textile Center

Today we had our second pre-researched company visit to the Milan Textile Center. But before that, we all had lunch together at Pizzeria 40, which was probably the most overwhelming lunch I've had yet. They gave us a whole bunch of appetizers: bread, bruschetta, and meat and cheese platters. This meal was also the only time I had pizza in the form of a slice instead of a whole pie. Also, this pizza was the thickest pizza I had ever seen in my life. My pizza was called the "Italy," and it had tomatoes and spinach on it. Like most of the food I've had on this trip, it was really good but it was just too much for me to finish.

After lunch, we headed to the Milan Textile Center, a consortium for different companies to rent or buy space and products, i.e. textiles and apparel. They don't make the products themselves, but they sell them to retailers. The company carries over 160 different brands. The company representative talked about the current challenges of the fashion industry in Italy, like how fast fashion (H&M and Zara) often trumps all other competition and that Chinese production is quickly matching the quality of Italian production. He also mentioned how Italian fashion is different from US fashion; he said that it seems like the US always either dresses really elegantly or very sporty, whereas Italy just keeps it semi formal all the time. It was really interesting to hear this and see how people from other countries viewed our fashion.

After our company visit, we had the rest of the day to ourselves. A bunch of us used this free time to walk the steps of the Milan Duomo. On the way up, we were wondering out loud if we should count how many steps we walked, when some people on their way down told us "don't even bother." They made it out to be like the walk was gonna be awful, but it actually wasn't that bad, and the view was beautiful. I gotta admit, it wasn't as nice as the view of Florence, but it was still really pretty. It was in this moment that I understood why Milan is called the New York City of Italy, the skyline looks so modern and sophisticated. Not only did we get a cool view of the city, but we got to see the architecture of the Duomo up close and personal.

After hiking the Duomo steps, we took the metro to the canals. They kinda looked like what I picture Venice to be like, but I've never been to Venice, so I can't say for sure if it really looked like Venice. On either side of the water were tons of shops and restaurants. Since it was happy hour, we did an aperitivo for dinner, and a lot of us also got gelato afterwards.

Day 8: Traveling Back to Milan

Today was a very lax day, since all we had on the schedule was to travel back to Milan. Before we left Florence, I spent some time walking around the marketplaces with a few friends. It was cool seeing all the things for sale, but it did get a little boring seeing the same things at ever single booth.

Afterwords, we all met at 11:30 to travel back to Milan. I slept on the train ride from to Milan. Then we got to our hotel in Milan, I slept some more. Basically I spent half the day sleeping. I know it isn't the best use of my time, but Italy was tiring me out and I needed to recharge. When me and my roommate finally got up, we got dinner with two other friends at a really nice restaurant a few blocks from it hotel. I was planning on getting some pasta, but once I noticed the brick oven in the corner, I knew I had to get pizza. I got a 4 cheese pizza and I think it was the best pizza I've had this entire trip. This dinner was also the most Italian meal I've had since we've been here, because we stayed at the restaurant for at least a good 3 hours, just talking and enjoying each other's company, like Italians do every meal. For dessert, we all split a tiramisu that was also really good that it was gone in 10 seconds. After dinner, we went back to the hotel and hung out with a few other friends. Overall, it was a relatively calm day.