Milano and Game 4

June 10, 2011: fashion capital and jersey trading

This is the part of the trip where I started to get sad and tried to figure out how to make time go by slower. Since our returning flight was out of Milan, I kinda sorta wanted to skip Milan altogether... I figured that if we never got there, we would never have to leave. My time in Italy thus far has renewed my desire to see the world. Although I was born in China, I moved to the US at such a young age that the majority of what I know stems from the American culture. I've only been out of the country twice since moving here at age 5 - once to see family in China, and once on a foreign exchange trip to Costa Rica. The more of the world I see, the more I realize that what I know is only a small fraction of life, and the bigger my craving gets to explore different places, cultures, food :), and people.

Anyways, I couldn't figure out how to slow down time, so we went on to explore Milan. We started with lunch at a local pizzeria, and continued on a short guided tour down Via Dante (Dante Street), a famous pedestrian street in Milan. We ended our tour in front of the Duomo di Milano (Milan Cathedral). The rest of the day was spent walking around, buying a souvenir or two, and getting ready for our 4th and final game.

Salami and provolone pizza. Italians eat a whole pizza this size by themselves!

Via Dante

Duomo di Milano. One of my favorite structures of the whole trip

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele shopping center

Castello Sforzesco, Milan's famous castle

Milan wasn't my favorite, only because I prefer mingling with locals and meeting new people over commercial hyper-touristy places, but it was still cool to see the city, especially the beautiful cathedral! We got on our bus to go to Meda, a suburb of Milan, where we played our last game. We came out against a well-organized Real Meda club team, and unfortunately ended up losing 3-1. We took full advantage of it being our last game by doing the traditional switching of jerseys with the other team after the game! I got myself a sweet Real Meda jersey, and the Italians were happy to get some American jerseys. After a little while of having fun being typical rowdy soccer players with the Real Meda girls, we said ciao and got on the bus to go to Hotel Cruise, our home for the last two nights of the trip.

Our room