Life in a year full of Saturdays: Milan

MILAN (Italy)

10 November – 12 November 2017

Another one on our to see list of performs, Bryan Adams, was performing at the Mediolanum Forum di Assago, near Milan. This wasn’t at all a difficult decision for us. The moment we knew tickets were purchased, flights to Milan were booked and accommodation reserved right next to the venue at half decent Royal Garden Hotel, all of 280mtrs away. SORTED.

We had a pretty basic plan but often they’re the best.

Fly into Milan. Hire a car. Take a day trip up to Lake Como. Got to Milan that evening for a bit of a look around, hit the concert the next day and fly back to Riga before anyone knew we were actually out of town.

Riga - Latvia

On the way to Milan

Lake Como - Italy

Driving out of Milan airport and heading the 50+kms north to Lake Como introduced us to certain peculiarities and odd features of the Milan ‘topography’.

The first was the inordinate proliferation of roundabouts. It was as if all the redundant and inconsequential roundabouts on this planet were sent en masse to inhabit, live and breed in Milan. It was unlike anything I’d ever witnessed before. It was as if love affair of the Milanese had gone far deeper than just that. It had developed into an addiction and then mutated into a violent sort of illness from which recovery could never be possible. It was genuinely alarming.

Lake Como - Italy

Woman are multi-taskers - it's obvious

Lake Como - Italy

Second, somewhere on our drive through the back-burbs of Milan we encountered a prostitute haven in the woods. Every second bend was occupied by scantly clad women whose booty mass was on show for all passers by. Both odd and amusing, it was 10-15kms worth of roadside wares for the frisky Italiano, or whomever else was passing by. I've never experienced a stretch of road like it in my life.

After beating the roundabouts and prostitutes we made it to the gloriously picturesque Lake Como, in the Lombardy region of Northern Italy, and were fortunate enough to have delivered a glorious mid-November day that made sightseeing absolutely delightful.

Lake Como - Italy

Set against the foothills of the Alps the lake is shaped like an upside-down Y. We drove from the town of Como up to one of the major points of Bellagio where we stopped to take in the views and walk through the quaint town prior to having a wine or two with a bit of light lunch.

That evening we decided to go and check out a little bit of Milan, and as seems to be the case with me fairly often I’ve discovered, the places that I’d either had prejudices against, or had heard bad things about, are often the ones that seem to impress. On this occasion my impression of Milan had come from family who had made their own assessment that Milan was a nothing place…well, to that I say, let me introduce you to Linea Traghetti Gaggiano Milano. This canal just a little outside of the city centre is just a mecca for nightlife with bars, restaurants and more bars filling the promenade for what felt like kms. It was outstanding!

Linea Traghetti Gaggiano Milano - Milan - Italy

The centre of Milan itself also had some attractions. Unfortunately we just didn’t have the time to take it all in and appreciate what was there but as a place to come back to, definitely. It was obvious from first brush that the city is built around fashion & style. Whilst still being the industrial capital of the north there is more than enough to keep the visitor engaged and intrigued for some time. So Milan, apologies, I judgement of you was completely unfair and I stand correct against my initial assessment.

BRYAN ADAMS – GET UP!

I forget how many times I’ve seen BA play live but I think it’s close to six or seven.

No matter what your opinion is of his music, whether you like him or not, his live performances are always outstanding and he delivers. Looking back over all the performers that we’d seen, there’s not one artist that gets close to delivering 29 songs in a set. The next best, from memory, were the Foo Fighters who performed for 3hrs in Riga, (26 songs).