La Dolce Vita

“I can resist everything except temptation.”

- Oscar Wilde

 

I don’t remember where I read this quote. It might have been on one of the walls of a ristorante, but it could never be more true to me than now in Milan. Every inch of the city says to indulge. Eat me, wear me, buy me, love me. And the Milanese have mastered this indulgent lifestyle turning it into art. 

Everyday I have Italian class from 9 to 11 am but in between we get a 10-minute break that’s actually 25, which we use to go to the bar across the street and grab an espresso standing up as the Milanese do. Everyday I order the same: uno cappuccino con il brioche al cioccolato per favore!

O dio mio, il brioche is to die for. Though it looks like a regular croissant, it’s nothing like it. I don’t know how they do it but it’s always perfectly toasty as if it just got out of the oven. The outer layer is flaky and honeyed and when you bite into it the inside is so soft with the chocolate melted just right. UGH. I can’t have enough. 

And though I can resist the Chanel for a bit longer, I could never say no to gelato. Everyday I get un conno piccolo con Pistachio and Cioccolato Bianco at Chocolat, the best gelateria of the city or do a midnight run to the gelateria a block away and get a fragola popsicle.  

And then there is the ingenuity of the aperitivi. 

The aperitivi is an Italian happy hour beginning at 6 pm throughout the bars and cafes in the city. But unlike America, the drink is complemented with a FREE buffet spread of prosciutto, smoked salmon, salads, pasta and risotto. It’s AMAZING. You sit there and nurse your sbagliato (an Italian drink) and eat amazing food while talking and checking out the other patrons for as long as you want. 

Il cibo è molto delicioso to say at the least. 

Chocolat!

Pistachio & White Chocolate!

Everybody loves gelato. Businessmen taking a gelato break.

Frida Bar

Frida from the outside.

A Spritzer! yum.

 

Aperitivo at the Living Bar.

 

 

Hello Milano!

“In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.”

- Graham Greene, The Third Man and The Fallen Idol

 

Ciao da Milano en l’Italia! 

Well, I made it! Indeed, after two weeks of XD (Extreme Diarrhea) courtesy of Ghana during my return to the States, I’m relieved to be rid of such ghastly bowel movements and thus joyously leap into the bounteous, luxurious lifestyle of the Milanese. 

Milan, the fashion capital of the world, is filled with people who look it. Proud, introspective and meticulously dressed. This one city is home to the world’s first shopping mall, La Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele, the original Prada shop and every other designer label: Gucci, Chanel, Fendi, Dolce e Gabbana. 

If ever I was fat at home then I’m monstrously obese here. The Milanese people are impossibly skinny. Men and women are all walking sticks. The entire city is made for thin people. My bathroom is literally three feet wide, so narrow that I feel claustrophobic when taking a shower and our elevator snugly fits 3 people at a time. 

But oh man, are they beautiful. The men really are gorgeous. Skinny jeans, perfectly cut, fitted dress shirts with four buttons undone and their curly chest hair peeking out. Even grandpas with pot bellies still wear fitted pants cut exactly at their ankles with Italian leather shoes – and this is all casual wear. 

The businessmen here all wear fitted suits and ties and ride their sexy BMW motociclette. 

Since I’ve been here my days have been packed with touring and seeing and stuffing my face and trying to recall all the Italian I’ve forgotten in the summer. By the time I get home my body aches all over and my feet are tortured to the bone. I feel like a goldfish that got picked up and plopped into a whole new bowl of water. It’s so unreal that with just one plane ride, you land in a whole new world, a country where the language sounds like water falling onto bells and every look is a postcard or a history page coming to life.

Spending months in Africa then in America and suddenly dropped in Milan is baffling to my senses. I feel like what I’m seeing is not real. Everything is too pretty like the backdrop of the Bellagio Hotel in Vegas and the buildings seem 2-dimensional and the sky is just the ceiling painted blue. 

But indeed, this is real. I’m in Italy. Sono qui en l’Italia. 

And while here I have three goals during my four-month stay in Milan: 

1. To become Milanese in every possible way.

2. To find an Italian moto boy who owns a white Vespa with leather seats. 

3. To try every gelato flavor, pasta dish and risotto I can find while simultaneously losing 20 pounds. 

 

Ciao ragazzi, stay tuned.

 

 

Piazzo del Duomo