The Science of Life: June 2012

After years of dreaming, I have finally stepped on Europe continent for the real first time

(because few years ago I been to Turkey and half of Istanbul is actually part of Europe).

Thanks to my travel buddy, my sis Eileen from KL, to make my Italy dream happened :)

You know, it's so hard to find the right kaki to travel especially such a long holiday!!

People who closer to me should now feel relief as I had been bugging/mumbling around trying to find travel buddy for all possible future trips.

This is my first time joining a Malaysia-based group tour too.

Eileen chose the best (and most expensive :P ) tour package from Reliance.

The package is near to RM9k which includes all dinners and some of the lunches.

My only requirements are only 1 country per trip and shouldn't be all Chinese meals included.

Well, another fresh experience of me as the group members, the tour leader, the package or even the language using throughout the journey were quite different from what I experienced from previous Singapore tours.

Firstly, the group members were more "enthusiastic" or "passionate" this time. From what we bought, what we wore, even our family and background, they also seems very interested haha.... They also become part of our "entertainment" throughout the journey too, quite hilarious actually ... :P

Second difference is our tour guide, Mr. D. Mr. D was using two languages in explanation which were Cantonese and of course English, although not 100% perfect but we were pretty amazed by he can repeat the exact same story again in second language most of the time. However, he was also the first tour guide that "forced" us to travel independently for most of the days, like he walked away first before all of the tour members got down from bus etc :P .

Lastly, we were assigned different local Italian tour guides in few cities too. This is good too actually, we got to meet more Italian (as Mr.D said Italy is a high crime country and we can only encouraged to interact with only one Italian who is our driver haha..) and no need to stick to just one local tour guide if he/she speaking Italian-style of English :P

But there's also one bad point of joining this tour, I have to fly to KL first before and after the trip.

The funny point is we were taking SIA flight and the travel agent said I can't board from Singapore.

That means I have to fly to KL one day before, then fly to Singapore the next day before flying to Italy.

Funny eh??

So after two short and one long haul flights, and after two big meals, some snacks, few cups of water/juice and a few sprays of moisturizing mist (thanks Eileen for introducing Avene such a great brand), we reached the second largest city of Italy--Milan.

I noticed that there were many Korean cars on the road especially Hyundai, reminds me what I've observed in Brisbane and Gold Coast last two years too.

That's why I was not surprise when I saw a huge Hyundai building around Milan central bus station.

Koreans really made a rapid progress in all industries these few years...

Our first stop in Milan was Sforza Castle from 14th century, and now houses several city museums and art collections.

What a waste that parts of the castle were destroyed during World War II.

Street view of Milan

Mr. D first brought us walked around Milan main tourist spots (although not many spots in Milan actually) and shopping districts before he let us explore on our own.
And he ordered us not to stop for shopping first on this nearly one-hour walking tour. :P

Trams were spotted everywhere in Milan, as well as other Italy big cities.

There was once our bus was following closely one of the tram, very strange feeling haha...

Too bad don't have chance to try their service myself.

This is the famous Leonardo da Vinci's statue.

He was not from Milan, but Milan people made his statue here to recognize his great contributions in this city.

This not-very-special building is actually the world-famous opera house, La Scala.

This was our first lunch in Italy.

Our tour didn't include most of the lunches actually, so this was our "own-funded" meal, and luckily because of that we got to try all these nicer food :)

Actually cost of living in this country is not really as high as most people expected.

These wonderful and huge lasagna and caesar salad were just 10-12 Euro each, cheaper than Singapore for sure (if you don't convert by currency exchange).

And Italy famous coffee (which is our espresso) was 1-1.50 Euro only.

See how big portion of the salad and how happy i was?? :P

After our lunch, we finally started our long waited shopping time!!!
We had nearly four full hours to shop around, and this was our ONLY longest shopping hours throughout the trip.
And because we had many shopping orders but shorter time, we didn't bother to take any picture to show how crazy we were haha....

This is Victor Emmanuel II Gallery which built in 1877 and you can find most of the designer boutiques here, such as LV, Ferragamo, Prada, Gucci etc...

In short, a shopping heaven for women haha....

Gucci boutique here has a special Gucci cafe.

But too bad we don't have time to sit down for a Gucci coffee or even forgot to browse through their menu to check how much it costs :P

This is the internal view of the gallery.

Feel so high class (贵妇feel) to shop here!!

After few hours shopping, we dragged our nearly-break legs and rushed to the world fourth largest cathedral, Milan Church, for a quick photo shoot session, to prove that we really did visited this city!! haha...

See how tired but contented we were after shopping??

The church is soooo beautiful and huge.
Look at the size of the people compared to the church!!

If you happen to visit here, please don't try to feed or touch the pigeons even though they look so cute or you desperately to show off your kind heart to Italians.

You will just expose to the virus that carried by the pigeons, or giving golden chance for those dark-skinned non-locals and non-foreigner to con you by just offer you the corns to feed the pigeons.

Please beware of those people as they were really everywhere around most of the tourist spots we been to within the country.

Just tried to zoom in a little to show you the external details of the church.

They are worth to spend hours to admire closely definitely.

Wasted that we don't do that :(

After the Milan city tour, we were up to our bus again and heading to restaurant for our dinner.

First spaghetti in Italy but a disappointed one.

Oh, Italian takes spaghetti or pizza as appetizer actually.

We were offered a bottle of red wine for free too but I didn't bother to take its picture as it's really not a good wine to show off here :P

Cooked salmon, fries and some greens were our main dish.

I hate cooked salmon :(

Can change to raw one or not???

Will they thought I am uncivilized if I eat raw fish??haha...

In short, our first dinner here was damn lousy!!!

Straight after dinner we were sent to our first hotel in Milan directly, which located quite far away from the city center.

Actually almost all our hotels were located far far away from city, and we were thinking maybe this is how the tour agent wants to limit our night activities so that they don't have to trouble themselves if anything happen to any of us.

And of course they are cheaper!

Our first hotel in Italy.

Not bad though because I love checkers haha...

Actually it was 8+pm when this picture was taken but please look at how bright it was outside the window, it's not lighting but it's natural sun light.

From what I observed, sunset in Italy was around 9pm during mid May.

You can explore the country longer if you are on your own free and easy trip.