A couple of weekends ago, we made our way to Milan for a long overdue trip to see my Uncle Alex and his family. The weekend had a bit of a late start because we opted for the 11 am train over the 6 am one. We didn’t wake up ridiculously early, but the downside was that we didn’t get into Milan until almost 4 pm. It was a pleasant-enough train ride, though.

We got to Milan, met with Uncle Alex and his family and were immediately driven to the most important place in the city, San Siro.

Unfortunately, we were one weekend off of any home games and the city was still reeling from the big AC Milan v. Inter Milan derby from the weekend before. Nevertheless, we managed to fit in a quick tour of the stadium even though they were closed to closing and even though both Uncle Alex and I had to go to our respective rival teams’ locker rooms.

Other highlights of the whirlwind trip through San Siro include walking through the players’ tunnel, hanging out in the stadium seats, pretending to be interviewed post-game, pretending to be an angry coach (not pictured) and a trip to the San Siro store where we bought way too much AC Milan gear and almost bought San Siro grass.

From San Siro, we made a quick stop by the Duomo to another important location of Milan, the Starbucks Reserve of town. In reality, we wanted to actually do the cathedral and take the elevators up to the terrace, but they had finished selling tickets for the day by the time we got there. We walked around the downtown area for a while, dodging people picking up bibs and packets for what was apparently a big race in town that weekend (one that everyone insisted was actually not happening).

Back to the important things, of course, Starbucks Reserve Roastery. These are essentially the fancy Starbucks locations that have opened in a few select cities where they are producing the coffee and serving some of the rarer coffees of the brand. It’s quite the experience and the menu is something else.

While in line to get our coffee, we ended up being talked into doing the special tasting experience with a barista. It meant that we were escorted out of line and seated in an area. Somehow, I missed the conversation about us doing the tasting, though, and ordered a separate coffee. I should have thought something was up when the waiter seemed surprised when I asked for a latte. I thought he was just super judgey. In any case, the latte was really good. Also, there was a really good nitrous ice cream with pour over coffee. Yeah, the Roastery was a pretty cool experience.

Somehow, after leaving the central area and making our way back to the flat, we had space for food and got some pretty good pizza. We spent the rest of the night playing 5 Minute Dungeon and some other board games with my cousin, Nicky.

We had tickets to do a Stranger Things-themed escape game the next morning. There was some pretty solid attention to detail in the game and, somehow, we managed to all escape. It was good teamwork.

We made it back down to the city center so Chris and I could actually get tickets to the Duomo Terrace. We walked through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in search of a place to eat. Apparently, in the Galleria, you’re supposed to spin around three times on the balls of a bull mosaic for good luck. It was harder to do than it looked, but also you feel incredibly silly doing it.

We had lunch at a delicious panini restaurant before the two of us finally made it back to the Duomo Terrace. We wanted to do the pairing with the Cathedral, but they were sold out of the combination tickets. Also, the rest of the group wasn’t going and was going to wait outside, so we didn’t want to hold everyone up for too long.

The Duomo Terrace is absolutely worth it, though. The views from the top are lovely and there are sexy buttresses all over the place.

We met up with everyone at the Carpisa store. Unlike the Venice trip from the weekend before, we had both time and bag space for a longer trip to the store. I had a list of things to get and grabbed a few other things. The sad irony of the trip, however, is that my travel purse broke on the way from the Basel train station that night. Had it broken before then, it would have been a good excuse to get a new bag there. Oh well.

We got back to the flat with enough time to introduce Nicky to Hanabi and, more importantly, Overcooked 2. We got to the train station and hopped on what was a much livelier train back to Basel. For the most part, the train ride was uneventful, other than the fact that the women next to us in the dining card ended up dining and ditching at one of the stations.

We got to Basel pretty late and I don’t think we got back home until right before midnight. It was a quick weekend, but a fun one. We didn’t practice our Italian too much over the weekend, but we did end up helping Nicky practice her English. Also, we beat an escape game.