Taking the train we arrived 3.5 hours and some metro ride later in our lovely AirBnB residence.
Earlyish the next morning we ventured to the expo. The many people luckily dispersed themselves among the many pavilions. Nevertheless were there some quite large queues in front of some nations. For example Japan had a sign that the waiting time would be 150 minutes for the 50 minutes tour! But probably the biggest line was in front of the Italian complex, all the narcissistic Italians ;)
We skipped the lines and usually headed to the next exhibition, a wise decision as later on many queues had disappeared. Sadly many nations weren't really showing any theme related exhibition, only propaganda and advertisement. Mostly the banana republics were displaying their great leaders, wealth and countryside. I don't know how this will end up with Kazakhstan presenting the expo 2017 with the theme of Future's Energy. Ridiculous as they have giant reserves of oil, natural gas, coal and uranium... Not exactly what I would call future energy sources...
So the conclusion, skip the queues and visit the first world nations if you want to see anything food related. Nevertheless I can just encourage everybody to visit, if only for the gigantic choice of food and drink!
The next day we spent strolling through Milano as I've never visited the city before. One thing we wanted to see for sure was the Bosco Verticale (vertical forest). A "skyscraper" with 800 trees planted on its balconies! An awesome sight and makes you wonder how the cities of the future might look like.
The next day we spent strolling through Milano as I've never visited the city before. One thing we wanted to see for sure was the Bosco Verticale (vertical forest). A "skyscraper" with 800 trees planted on its balconies! An awesome sight and makes you wonder how the cities of the future might look like.
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| Bosco Verticle, this is by the way not an Instagram effect but my camera which is slowly dying :( |
Side note, what really astounded me were the amount of Chinese people living in Milano. A wiki excursion later revealed that 2% of the inhabitants are of Chinese decent, almost 20'000 people!
A quick stop at the gigantic cathedral and the market hall later we took the metro further south to the canal district. Here centuries ago all the merchandise got transshipped. Now this is the trendy and tourist place with lots of bars, restaurants and shops.
The last day we spent again strolling from cafe to restaurant before boarding the train back home.