Milan - Opening Thoughts

She Didn't Offer the Best First Impression
When I awoke and peered out my hotel window I rubbed my eyes a few times.  I was still groggy and wasn't quite sure where I was.  Budapest?  Warsaw?  Milan, at least the area I was staying in, looked like an ugly Eastern European cousin.  Drab blocks of utilitarian apartments ringed wide boulevards with balding greenery.

It's as if this part of Italy had been lost to the commies and was only recently reclaimed.

There were boarded up newspaper kiosks and a dusty breeze kicked bits of paper and cigarette butts into the air.

Then I noticed the wall.  It rings the old city and serves as the dividing line between the old and the new.  The medieval is inside, the forgettable modernity is left thankfully outside.

One step and you go back hundreds of years.  It's the Italy of the movies.  The stone streets, the Roman architecture and in the distance, the Duomo.  It's facade has been recently cleaned and it looked to me like like a freshly made cake with vanilla frosting.