We settled up our 8€ city tax and packed ourselves up ready for a day of travel. But what a beautiful day! Blue skies all round. We have a simple breakie of a slightly stale Lidl chocolate croissant and a velvety yoghurt with a fruity compote at the bottom – mine peach and Leon’s cherry. our destination today is Milan Malpensa airport, but via San Siro stadium to attempt to get an illusive special pin! These special objects people are going mad for, are released daily, and only 250!! We thought we may aswell try and even if we don’t get one, we will have the memory of seeing an iconic landmark.
First leg: Colico to Milan Centrale (90min). I took another photo of the interior which I forgot to on the way and that was definitely worth a snap! Leon quipped at me that all I got was the column in the first pic (I liked the column!), so I made another image without this ‘obstruction’.
We then got the metro to garibaldi (sadly no biscuits), and then swapped onto the purple M5 line to San Siro stadium. (30 ish min).
As soon as you get out the station you see the monument of San Siro poking out from between the trees with its red Meccano like topping. We follow our phone map to the pinned location which takes us to some kind of wedding gift shop. The man in there had his mouthful of something white and crumbly, like cottage cheese stuck between his teeth, tells me that the point we need to go to is the news agents at the end of the road that we’ve just passed. So back we go. Surprisingly, that doesn’t seem to be too many people and it is 11 am and the pins are due to be given out at 12. So we naïvely thought that perhaps people weren’t as fussed about it as the media was making out. We joined the queue, thankfully in the shade as the sun was really hot. About half an hour later, a lady with a lanyard littered with many of these pins, and an official Olympics one to, tell the queue that people had actually arrived at 5 am and it was such a danger to the road. They gave them each a number on a piece of paper and told them to come back for 12 to pick their pin up. So they were actually no more left unless you had collected one of these tokens at 5 am. It was a bit disappointing as we wanted to get one for a friend who is a big fan of AC Milan and San Siro. So we settled for grabbing a fridge magnet from the newsagent stand which hopefully he will like. Not quite the same, but it can’t be helped.
We planned our journey back to the airport and decided to get out at the interchanging Metro to regular train stop as we still had loads of time left before the plane was due.
We got out and tried to find some lunch and picked up some sandwiches and arrancini balls from the carre four. Many shops were closed being a Sunday, but we found a little café. They weren’t selling anything savoury so we had to make do with some biscuits and a coffee for lunch. Not Garibaldi! Five minutes later, he told us that they were shutting in five minutes so we grabbed our cold drinks for on the way. A couple of shops along we looked in a closed window at the property that were for sale in the area just to be nosy really and the guy came running up to me with my hat which I’d managed to leave in the café. Very kind of him!
We got on our way to the airport on the Trenord train, and ate the arrancini balls which were revolting. Hard, dry and salty. Not at all as they are meant to be! 45 minutes later we were at terminal one. This was about 1.45 and the plane is not due to takeoff till 6.20. It would be a wonderful airport to be in if you really like to designer shops, as it had every well-known Italian expensive brand. We were not that interested in those but we really did enjoy the panoramic view of the snow topped Alps. we have found a quiet area in the airport and already eaten our sandwiches and taken boots off to get comfy! It’s 4pm now so still a while until we will be able to board, especially as the plane is delayed 20min. Maybe I will have a read…