48 HOURS IN MILAN

Milano. At the end of March, my boyfriend and I did a mini travel trip to a few cities in Italy. Milan was our first stop - a gorgeous modern city with beautiful architecture, the iconic Duomo and many other wonders. I thought I'd write this post to share what we managed to accomplish after spending 48 hours in Milan. From food to photo locations, I'm going to give you all the low down on my favourite places to eat and visit when staying in Milan...especially if you're only here for a short period of time, like us, and want to get to the best places! 

The most renowned Milan monument is the astounding Duomo. The Duomo square is unfortunately surrounded by salesmen who try and force flowers, bracelets and other random items onto you. My top tip when visiting Milan is saying NO to these men because they try and trick you into giving you items for free but will follow you around afterwards in hope for cash. It's very difficult to avoid and you will inevitably get approached but you just have to politely say no and get on with your day! Anyway, back to the Duomo...I'd highly recommend buying a ticket to go inside. The ticket office is in a separate building to the right of the Duomo (looking towards it) and you can buy tickets to different sections of the building. The cathedral is even bigger on the inside - we explored the main area first, taking photos of the gorgeous stained glass windows and lighting a candle. Following this, we had a look at the Bapistery of San Giovanni alle fonti - this was the first baptistery in Christianity that had an octagonal structure with an immersion font! The incredible fact about this place, despite the dilapidated aesthetic, is that it started being built in the 4th century. There is so many incredible historical and cultural links to the Duomo so if that aspect of a trip interests you, you HAVE to visit the Duomo. We also queued for an hour to climb to the roof and it was definitely worth it. The salmon pink, grey and white marble was beautiful, especially for photos, not to mention the view from the very top. If you are scared of heights, maybe this isn't one for you but I thoroughly enjoyed admiring Milano (not so much the climb up a thin, long staircase)! 

Our main sources of food when we ate out in Milan was pizza! The pizza in Italy is ridiculously cheap - I was expecting traditional Italian cuisine to be rather expensive but pizza is the most affordable. Usually costing the equivalent to £6-7, we opted for this both evenings that we stayed...gimme all the carbs! My favourite place to eat in Milano was this adorable pizzeria located on the right side of canal Naviglio - Premiata Pizzeria. The restaurant was quite hidden; we took a risk as we'd never heard of it before but the place looked homely, busy and quaint. The pizzas there were absolutely amazing! Only issue we had was my boyfriend's fault...he ordered San Pellegrino thinking that they'd get us the delicious lemon drinks, which are both of our favourites. It turned out that their original San Pellegrino was sparkling water, our worst nightmare, and we just drank it! If you're looking for gelato, I'd highly recommend La Volglia Gelateria on the road Via Dante. We came across this on the way to the Sforza castle and really enjoyed the lemon gelato - it tastes like sorbet and was heavenly!

Other places worth visiting have to be the Sforza castle for a lovely walk around the grounds, the 

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II for shopping (or just to browse because the shops are extremely high 

end and out of our budget) and the surrounding area of the Duomo for high street shops. I really loved 

Bath and Body works & visiting the Kiko Milano store. Another important thing to note is that we opted

for underground travel as our Air BnB was a little out of the centre. You buy tickets from the 

underground stations at machines - the cost isn't too much for a single journey (roughly £2-3). 

Link to our Air BnB  (CLICK HERE to receive £25 off your first Air BnB)

Link to Milan Vlog

Have you ever visited Milan before? Would you like to in the future?

Lots of love