I’ve been to 4 EICMA’s thus far (EICMA being the single largest motorcycle trade show in the world), but I never really had the time to see anything in Milan besides the trade show itself. The day starts off with breakfast in the hotel, followed by 10-12 hours of trade show, finished off by a late night dinner somewhere in a night draped city.

This scenario changed slightly this year as I asked Ania to come over for a weekend and I took a day off to sight see a little of Milan. Wroclaw has really cheap flight connection with Milan, we’re talking $40 dollars round trip for an hour and half flight. We spent entire Saturday walking the city and here are a few photos from that day.

The Milan Cathedral is of course what stands out the most in the city. The Duomo di Milano, as it is known in Italian, was built in 1386 A.D. as a construction project on top of a burned out cathedral that stood in its place since 355 A.D. That’s a lot of history in and of itself, but I also learned that the Duomo is basically the centre of the city with all streets either leading to or circling the cathedral.

We started our day with a tour inside the cathedral, and then took some 250 steps to the roof. Both inside and out, the Duomo is a spectacular feat in architecture, but the roof has some awesome views and I liked that more. From Duomo we walked over to Galleria Vittorio Emanuele right next door. Not for shopping though, no way, no how. Not much I wanted to buy at the Ferrari store anyway. But once again the architecture was very impressive.

Following down Via Turino, one of Milan’s main shopping streets, we cruised out and about the city on foot for hours. Managed to stop by a 30€ (euro) Italian shoe outlet, where of course Ania found a pair that “just fits!”. We also bought a couple of Panettone’s, traditional Italian sweet bread. It’s become a tradition that I bring one from Milan for Christmas every year, this time we bought them together.

Security was extremely tight everywhere as Milan was on high alert due to terrorism threat. But hundreds of police and army personnel with machine guns made us feel fairly safe. I would usually make a joke about an Italian cop cause they look a little funny and look like they do everything in a very slow hurry. But this time around I am very thankful and appreciative of what I saw. Machine guns and vigilance is what I saw. No fucking around there. Thank you Carabinieri.