Week Two: Milan & Venice

I realised I hadn't introduced my purpose of being in Milan. Aside from travelling, I was also studying Italian Cinema and Creative Writing with 5 other Australian students. For the first week, we all waddled around as a group of ducks exploring their new environment. Here we found:

At first, I felt significantly underwhelemed by Milan, as most of its architecture is pretty bland and industrial. Early into the second week, we discovered the canals which dramatically increased my affections for Milan, it's a pretty nice place to be. There's also this thing called "Apertivo" which is like 3 hours long and you get a fucking FREE buffet. Smartest idea ever, skip dinner and fill up on free chicken wings, let the juices run down your chin and enjoy the fact that its pretty much FREE. The only downside is you have to buy a drink to get the buffet - which is a total shame #sarcasm. I had the best fucking sangria I've ever had.

Later on that week, Tammy, Jake and I made our way down to Garibaldi. Not sure what the actual name of the street was but it was buzzzin'. We sat around drinking mojitos, smoking a shisha and playing "two truths and a lie." 

The next day we jumped on a train to Venice. This place blew my mind. I turned to Tammy and Jake and said "we will probably never get to come here again." Apparently, in a few years its all going to be underwater. That made this whole thing a lot more like.. surreal I guess. It's a beautiful place. But the city is a microcosm of human pollution. It's a beautiful place but then there are drunk people and fat American's everywhere just throwing their rubbish on the ground and suffocating the streets. It's kind of overwhelming. And sad.

But here I am not giving a fuck sipping on an espresso martini. Or whatever the bartender made, since he had no idea what an espresso martini was. Can I just say, I'm gonna go ahead and say it. Whoever said that Italy was the coffee capital of the world is obviously a 82 year old Italian man who hasn't left the country in his entire existence. Melbourne absolutely fucking OWNS Italy in coffee. I actually don't think I had one nice coffee in Italy at all. Or if I did, it was so average that it deserves to be forgotten. My favourite kind of coffee in Italy was one that came out of a fucking ice cream machine.

Anyway, this was a very nice little restaurant anyway. We were sheltered from the sun via vines and I had some kind of vegetarian pasta dish and I felt really clean and like a real adult.

Then we found this incredibly spiritual podium thing that goes out onto the water and we watched the sunset. Tammy and I talked about how strange it was that we were sitting on the other side of the world. At that time, I thought that I would have much better moments in my travels then sitting there, but to be honest - I don't think I have. 

And now I just wanted to include this picture because it looks like if the Grand Budapest Hotel was on water and I really like it. If I could live somewhere in an imaginary world I would live in this building.