Milan

Make way for the beautiful people – Milan is all about swishing around in the perfect outfit, lounging about in elegant restaurants with your friends and exhibiting impeccable manners.  This is not a place where the scruffy backpacker look is popular – this is a place where you make the effort.  Italy’s pretty expensive anyway, but Milan is particularly so.  So grab your smartest street-wear, brush up on your best dazzling smile, and read on for the best way to save money and still get the most out of your time in the stunningly beautiful Milan.

Let’s start with food.

Well, Italy’s so damn good at it, after all.  Milan has some great restaurants, so we’re listed a few here, some for people purely on a budget, some who just want, not unreasonably, value for money. 

  • L’Isola Fiorita (The Flowery Island).  Located at Ripa di Porta, Ticinese, 83, this restaurant is close to Naviglio, the busy night-spot next to the canal.  There’s nothing fancy about this place, but the food is good, and they give you loads of it!  You should particularly look out for the gnocchi and risotto. 
  • Da Biagio.  This is a cool pizza and beer joint, with excellent food and a great atmosphere.  You’ll find it on Via Vincenzo Monti 28.  It’s great value for money.  Closed on Sundays.
  • Rita e Antonio – Another great one for swift service, with excellent value meals.  The pizza is great, and so is the Osso Buco (braised veal shanks).    The place gets packed, but the turnover is pretty fast. 
  • La Briciola – Via Solferino 25.  Give them a call to book on 02 655 1012
  • Trattoria Toscana – Corso di Porta Ticinese 58.  A bit of a nicer one, this one, but popular with the locals and the food and service is very good.  You could give them a bell to book a table on 02 8940 6292.

And then maybe a few drinks.
Not really an Italian speciality, drinking.  This is probably a good thing, because it results in a conspicuous lack of teams of drunken young men trooping through the streets bellowing football chants.  Like the rest of Italy, in Milan you are far more likely to spend the evening – and small hours of the morning – chilling out in a restaurant over a few bottles of wine with your friends.  However, there are a few bars and bar areas that we’d like to point out, along with a few tips.

  • Ticinese – This is probably the area that backpackers would be most into.  It’s loud, it’s lively and the drinks are possibly the most affordable.
  • Naviglio – A chilled-out, popular area with lots of bars and live music.
  • Beer – as a rough guide, a pint of beer will set you back between 5 and 7 Euros.  Ouch.  A cocktail will cost around 8 Euros, which actually is just a bit better than London prices.  Plus, they free-pour in Italy.  None of this painstaking shot-measuring lark.
  • Aperitivo! – Possibly Italy’s finest invention.  Aperitivo is the event between your two hour lunch and your three hour dinner where you go have a drink and some snacks.  The result of this is that almost every bar between the hours of 6pm and 8pm provides a buffet of free snacks that you can help yourself to as you drink.  Admittedly, the drinks are a little more expensive at this time, since you’re subsidising the buffet, but this is early on in the evening, and you don’t have to have lots to drink.  In fact, you’re not meant to at this time.  The buffets can be really quite comprehensive, with pasta dishes laid out as well as smaller nibbly bits.  If you’ve had a decent sized lunch, you can easily fill up on the buffets and skip dinner altogether.  Fantastic way to save money. 
  • Clubs – yep, Milan does have them!  A few that we like are Plastic (gay nights, techno nights, live music nights, bit if everything), Toque Ville (very very trendy), Rolling Stone (you guessed it: rock) and Magazzini Generali.
  • Timing – Luckily, you don’t have to rush.  It’s perfectly normal to head to a club at about 3am.  It’s getting earlier, though, and you’ll have less of a wait on the door if you head there earlier:  say, about midnight.  They tend to close at about 7am.
  • Drinks – Usually your entrance fee will include a drink. 

How about some sight-seeing...on a budget?

Unlike Rome, all the churches in Milan are FREE to enter!  Fantastic.  The big one is the Duomo (Cathedral), which is incredible both inside and out and is very worth seeing.  But a few others that should be added to your list are:

  • Santa Maria delle Grazie – where you will find Da Vinci’s famous Last Supper, but you have to book and pay to see that.  But the church itself is beautiful, too!
  • Santa Ambrogio – a church dedicated to the patron saint of Milan. 
  • Universities – also have some amazing buildings.  Check out La Catholica college, just behind Santa Ambrogio. 
  • Castello Sforzesco – A cute and ornate castle within Parco Sempione, Milan’s biggest (though still not exactly massive!) park.  It’s free to go inside the grounds and have a wander around.
  • Duomo Roof – The view of the city from up here is magnificent.  The fee is not too exorbitant. 
  • Torre Branca – You have to hand it to Mussolini – he knew how to build a very tall but rather unattractive tower.  The view from up here is stunning though, and while you’re at the top you don’t have to see the tower itself.

And last but not least – getting around without forking out for taxis.
Start at the beginning – airports.  You’ll either fly into Linate airport, or Malpensa.  Easyjet flies to both.  From Linate airport you’ll be able to get a bus straight into the centre of Milan – it stops at San Babila.  It’s about 45 minutes into the city centre.  If you fly to Malpensa, you can get the Malpensa Express train into the city.  It takes about 50 minutes to get from Cadorna Station (at Terminal 1 of the airport) into the centre, and costs about 11 Euros.  If you fly into Terminal 2, you must get the bus to Terminal 1 to get the train. 

Public Transport:
The Milan Metro is pretty good.  It consists of three lines –Green, Red and Yellow.  They are building a new line (the Blue line), which will hopefully go to Linate airport, but until then you’ll just have to make do with the bus or a 15 Euro taxi fare.  The bus and metro tickets are interchangeable, and single tickets are for use for 75 minutes from when they were validated.  You MUST validate your tickets, or else you will be fined, as with much of the rest of Europe.  The metros are frequent and reliable. 
You’ll see trams making their way about the city, too, and the names of the stops are on the boards at the tram stops.  These and the buses are fairly easy to figure out, but if you have any problems you can always ask the driver.  Try: “Mi scusi, questo tram/bus va a...?” (Excuse me, does this tram/bus go to...?)  Hang around near him and maybe he’ll give you a shout when it comes to your stop.