My boyfriend and I continued our annual date week in Milan, recreating our first date and making new memories. Every year around beginning of October (we were a bit late this year) we stay at Park Hyatt Milan with 'The Red Dress' for an extended date night.
We don't really get much alone time and this is a nice way to spend a romantic getaway.
The first time I wore the dress in 2012 for a photo, neither of us expected to make it the next year. The following year we were still together with some free time in Europe around the 1 year mark and I happened to have the dress in my luggage. Voila - a tradition was born.
Park Hyatt Milan
It's always a pleasure staying at this location. From the moment you step onto those perfect marble steps, you feel as if you've entered another atmosphere. You can sense a marked difference in even the smell, via a special fragrance they use to scent the entire building. The lobby is open to the lounge surrounded by a glass dome with various chandeliers and artwork. The service is impeccable and it's always so nice to be back.
But this year, they stepped it up a notch.
And by a notch, I mean upgraded to one of the best hotel experiences I've ever had.
The massive black marble and gold entrance opens up to a balcony, kitchenette, and
a large living room. I actually had to run to get from point A to B.
The living room is connected to the office, bedroom, and bathroom.
The bathroom is similar to other suites, floor to ceiling marble with double sinks, jacuzzi bath and touch screen shower, and massive closet space. But there's an extra feature:
In-bathroom mini gym and massage table! Over the top? Maybe. Do I ever want to leave this bathroom? Not a chance.
So with the amazing hotel there must be an amazing dinner to match.
Cracco
We got a reservation at the Cracco thanks to a friend's recommendation. It's a Michelin 2 star restaurant that we've never been to and frankly knew almost nothing about. We found the restaurant brighter than most places and the food quite creative - but little did we know the chef was a popular celebrity in Italy.
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| Table |
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| Bright interior |
They give you a lot of snacks prior to the food. It was white truffle season, which meant a whole set of seasonal menu was added.
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| Various fingerfoods including various flavored rice puffs |
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| Lentil with chestnut and passionfruit |
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| Pork cheek with langoustine on top |
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| White truffle with roasted hazelnut on raw beef - so tasty! |
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| "Egg" pasta. There's egg white on the bottom and orange is just egg yolk. |
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| Truffle pasta |
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| Veal with truffle and roasted hazelnut. That combination was heavenly. |
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| Milanese veal |
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| Frozen fruit ice cream - really well made. |
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| Chocolates and creams |
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| Post dessert-dessert. The paper thin fruits were my favorites. |
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| The chef himself gave us a kitchen tour! |
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| You can't come to Italy without trying some pizza. |
It's a chain restaurant known for its mozzarella, but a great restaurant to have a quick lunch or do a mozzarella tasting menu like us.
Beware, they do pretty big portions for Italy. When we asked for a sampler of ham and cheese, we were given full meal sizes. Not what I expected, but still delicious.
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| Bread, mozzarella, ham tasting. They give you 5 full sized cheese to share. |
Artico
This probably wasn't the best idea we've had all trip, but we needed to have at least one good gelato no matter how cold it is outside. Super creamy gelato with all the flavors you can think of, plus my favorites like white chocolate hazelnut and salted pistachio. I think I developed a little cough, but I couldn't stop eating it!
Langosteria
This is another must try on my list of restaurants in Milan.
I try to always venture to new places to eat, but this seafood restaurant was so good I had to come back.
I eat quite a lot of carbs and sweets when in Italy and a seafood restaurant is perfect for eating healthy and light for a change. Especially a restaurant as consistently good as this place!
I got their classic tasting menu again. A lot of things in the menu look great, but the tasting menu had nearly everything you might want to try.
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| Gazpacho |
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| Red snapper sashimi |
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| Shrimp and squid mixture |
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| King crabs in tomato sauce |
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| Seafood pasta |
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| Lobster pasta |
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| Chocolate hazelnut cake |
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| Ice fruits, which were either just hard frozen fruit or ice cream stuck on shells. Not very good. |
One of the biggest regrets that I've had in the past was not being able to do much sight seeing. Aside from that one time I was bedridden the entire trip from food poisoning, I'm usually in the city for only a couple of days filled with much needed sleep and plenty of restaurant reservations.
This year we finally had the chance to go on a guided trip around the city.
Duomo
This is by far the most well known architecture in the city. Even though the Duomo is just in front of the hotel, I only went to go visit the inside just once.The reason being it's usually way too crowded and the outer all-marble facade itself is beautiful enough to appreciate by just passing by.
Couple of facts:
- This is the largest church in Italy and the fifth largest in the world.
- It took nearly 6 centuries to finish.
- The outer layer of the church is in all marble.
- No building in the city can be taller than the top of the church; whenever there is a taller building, they raise a taller tower.
The inside is lined with hundreds of Gothic style pillars with a ceiling that is actually painted on in 3D style. There are massive colorful windows with images of the bible, a common practice for old churches that served to accommodate illiterate peasant attendees.
I also found some of the saints and corpses of Popes interesting. A pretty morbid reminder of the afterlife.
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| You can see the decayed Pope under the clothes |
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| Saint Bartholomew, who was known for being skinned alive |
The Last Supper
Finally, after years in Art History and multiple mentions by Dan Brown, I got to visit the infamous Last Supper by Da Vinci in person. I've missed the opportunity from sickness or bad scheduling in the past years, but I finally got around to it. Better late than never.
The tour begins in the monastery that houses the painting. It surrounds a well kept garden and a hallway that won't allow more than 30-40 people at a time. Due to the experimental painting method, which was more of a fail, the painting began deteriorating shortly after it was finished and many centuries of regular restoration kept it visible until modern day. It's treated like a delicate newborn child with very strict guards - one man was screamed (I mean SCREAMED) at for whistling in the painting's presence.
The painting is actually a lot larger than I expected. The painting itself is big enough for the figures to be considered nearly life-size. It's on a wall of a big room which was actually used temporarily as a horse barn during the World War. The lesser known Crucifixion by Giovanni Donato da Montorfano is on the opposite wall.
Unfortunately the guide was less than spectacular. The Last Supper tour was a total of 3 hour trip with only 15 minute visit to the actual painting itself. Every one of us was either hushed at or yelled at by the guards for doing something that offended them that wasn't listed on the 'do not attempt' signs. The gift shop was small with not much else to see other than the two paintings, and the historical facts were less interesting than ones you might find on Google. We found out more about the tour guide's favorite fashion designer than the painting itself.
I really wanted to love this exclusive experience, I truly did.
But in the end I personally found the articles and myths surrounding this historical piece of artwork much more interesting than being ushered like a herd of sheep and yelled at for 15 minutes. Thankfully, there's plenty of other things to do in Milan to keep the trip excited.
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