Milan. Day 1. Started at 6:30 AM and walked to McDonald’s at Galleria Vittorio. The only place open. €11.25 for breakfast — a McMuffin and coffee, no judgment accepted. When Milan is still asleep and you’ve got the Duomo on your schedule, you take what the city gives you.

👁 Vista — The Duomo di Milano

I walked over to the Duomo and paced the square, taking photos and letting the cathedral sink in. The Duomo di Milano is the fifth-largest cathedral in the world — a Gothic mountain of Candoglia marble that took nearly 600 years to build, from 1386 to 1965. It holds over 3,400 statues, 135 spires, and 150 gargoyles. The Madonnina — a gilded statue of the Virgin Mary — has crowned the tallest spire at 108.5 metres since 1774. Inside: 52 pillars, one for every week of the year.

And then I noticed the enormous electronic display attached to the cathedral, advertising merchandise. A scrolling LED billboard on a 600-year-old Gothic masterpiece. Sad to see society crumble like this. Next we’ll have pews and bibles sponsored by consumer products. The church as billboard — a metaphor for the age.

Ironically, I then had to purchase tickets to visit the rooftop and cathedral — $30 USD. My entrance was for 9 AM. Consumerism at the door, transcendence on the roof.

The Climb

The climb up was difficult but not too challenging. My walking weight loss and endless Georgian mountains have built up endurance.

The views from the two separate levels on the roof are spectacular — a forest of flying buttresses, carved pinnacles, and marble saints at eye level. You can walk among the spires, close enough to touch sculptures that have been looking down on Milan for centuries. There’s also a lift, but I’m not sure how high it goes. The stairs felt right. You earn a view like this.

The climb down leads you into the Cathedral itself. There’s an attendant checking your admittance ticket, so make sure your ticket covers both the roof and the church. I sat in the nave for a while — 45-metre Gothic vaults above, stained glass from the 15th and 16th centuries filtering the morning light, the whole space humming with the quiet awe of tourists and worshippers alike.

🎨 Pinacoteca di Brera

Around 10:15 AM I headed to the Pinacoteca di Brera — €20. Housed in the Palazzo Brera, a former Jesuit convent turned Napoleonic cultural institution, the gallery was founded in 1776 alongside the Brera Academy. Napoleon opened it as a public museum in 1809 — on his birthday, naturally. It now holds one of Italy’s foremost collections of paintings from the 13th to the 20th century.

Favourite artists:

• Giovan Battista Moroni
• Lorenzo Costa il Vecchio
• Lorenzo Leombruno
• Carlo Crivelli
• Caravaggio — his Supper at Emmaus (1606) is here, Christ revealed at the breaking of bread, the apostles recoiling in recognition
• Giacomo Ceruti
• Francesco Hayez — The Kiss (1859), arguably the most famous Italian Romantic painting, two figures locked in an embrace that’s equal parts passion and political allegory
• Pelagio Palagi
• Gerolamo Induno

After the museum I headed back to the apartment to rest and recharge my iPhone, whose batteries are on their last legs. The phone is dying roughly in parallel with my tolerance for carrying around a portable charger. Both will need replacing soon.

👅 Palate — Chicken Biryani in Milan

Afternoon lunch at Real One Indian Restaurant: chicken biryani and garlic naan — €25.50. The spicy flavour I’d been longing for. After a month of Georgian khinkali and khachapuri — both excellent, both beloved — my palate needed something from a different continent. Milan delivered.

🏰 Castello Sforzesco & The Piano Man

After lunch, a stroll to Castello Sforzesco to enjoy the scenery and conduct some Saily Internet speed tests. The castle — a 15th-century fortress that once housed Leonardo da Vinci’s workshop — anchors Parco Sempione, Milan’s central green space.

A man was playing a piano keyboard in the park behind the castle. I bought pistachio ice cream and sat at a table to listen. No stage, no ticket, no programme — just a man, his keyboard, and whoever happened to be walking through Parco Sempione on a weekday afternoon. After the violin woman in Tbilisi and now the piano man in Milan, I’m collecting a small anthology of park musicians across Europe.

For dinner I ate at Luna Rossa — €14 pizza. Good pizza, but I can’t eat pizza for a long while now. Too carbed up. Italy is going to test this resolution daily.

Tonight is planning. Flying to Amsterdam on Saturday. Milan got one full day and it delivered: Gothic marble, Italian masters, Indian spice, and a piano in the park. Not bad for a city I heard was “dead.”

By the Numbers

Item	EUR
Breakfast (McDonald’s)	€11.25
Duomo rooftop + cathedral ($30 USD)	€27.60
Pinacoteca di Brera	€20.00
Lunch (Real One Indian — biryani + naan)	€25.50
Dinner (Luna Rossa — pizza)	€14.00
Total	€98.35

Ice cream cost to come.