Milan: Eat

Most of the people I know told me to shop in Milan. But I didn't at all. I waited until I am in Paris to shop. Main reason is that I still have another flight to take to Paris and we were using EasyJet. This Easyjet is somehow annoying because you are not allow to bring a carry-on and an extra handbag/laptop bag/etc. Meaning that I need to squeeze my sling bag into my carry-on luggage. My carry-on luggage is already quite full and if I squeeze the sling bag in, it's almost impossible to zip it alone. We only have a checked in baggage which is almost 20kg too. On the last flight we measure was 19.9kg. So what i can buy must be real light and have to be hand carry. That suits me because my plan is to buy bags and I have to hand carry them no matter what as they are too expensive to be checked in and face the consequence that someone in KLIA might open up my bag and take them, and I need to do VAT return and might need to show the immigration the stuff I purchased if being asked. I am serious about the part where someone in Malaysia might open the bag while in transit or before the bag comes being placed on the conveyor belt. 

Another part that I would like to talk about is why we have only 1 checked in baggage. Yes, MAS allow us to check in one each, meaning that we have 2 for both of us. The problem is not that. We experienced it already so I can really say that I am glad we only bring 1 checked in baggage. We had to pull and carry all our bags through bus, train, subway or metropolitan and face the danger to be pickpocket.  The subway/metropolitan in Europe, almost all of them don't have lifts. Some may have elevator which still hard to walk around when we have to take our on transportation to reach hotel to check-in and to go to the airport after check-out. For us, I hold had a sling bag on my shoulder and carry the 14" trolley bag. For my hubby, he had a camera bag sling on across his body, a back pack and a checked in baggage worth of ~20kg. Imagine if I need to carry a 20kg up all the stairs, not only 1 stairs in subway. Sometimes you need to change a few trains and go below few levels of underground to reach the station of your destination train. 

So I only manage to get few bags for myself and family and those are mostly long champ which can easily be folded to put into my bags. I only bought the later 2 long champs when we were about to leave Paris on plane because I realized I can squeeze another 2. 

Alright back to the original posting. Milan!!!

We took flight from Rome to Milan because it's more convenient for our friends who stay in Varese to pick us up from airport. We were staying close to the border of Switzerland and if the weather is clear, we can catch a glimpse of the Alps. However we only had 2 days in Milan, in exact 1.5 days as by the time we arrived, it was already 11am.

We went for some local food. This is the bruschetta which we usually see on small piece of grilled bread. We had this one a size of meal bread. One of this is served for one person as meal. Mine is with the bacon and mushroom.

Then we went back to rest for a while before making our way to Milan city. We took the metro there as it's hard to find car park and going around in city in car. This is the famous Milan duomo. 

Then we walked around the place and this picture was taken in front of the Italy castle for the past Kings. 

For dinner we had the crepes. Crepe is actually pronounced as "crap". We had one of this for everyone. I had mine with sangria, the cocktail drink with lots of fruits in red wine.

The next morning, we had the Italian breakfast in local bakery. Croissant and cappuccino. 

Without wasting time, we drove to our wishlist, Lake Como. The wedding scene in Star Wars was filmed  in one of the villa at Lake Como.

We had a full 4 course meal for lunch.

At night, we went for local pizza. They were really yummy!!! 

We finished it up by sharing a tiramisu between my hubby and I. 

Our Milan trip is more like experiencing the life of Italian, something different in our Europe trip. Love it.

Pesto and salami spaghetti

Here's are the some kitchen ingredients that I bought from Milan during our trip there. Forget about the bottle in the middle, the other 2 at the sides are pasta sauces. There are 2 types of salami, one is the normal type, the other is spicy version. 

On Thursday I made pasta for dinner although we had pasta on Tuesday by our dear friend Fang Fang. I used the pesto sauce I got from Milan and some left over cream from Tuesday.

For the salami, I used up all that left from Tuesday. I cut them into strips using scissors. Some of the strips are a little larger than the rest as I lost my concentration after a while because I need to prepare dinner and struggled with my toddler pulling my legs and clothes asking me to go out to play with him in the living room.

The ingredients are very simply as pesto sauce already made up much of them.

So what I did was only to cook the salami and mushroom slices in olive oil. My friend told me she started to move to fresh shitake mushroom as it gives better flavor. I agree with her that's why I did the same too now and better still, it's cheaper than the white button mushroom or the grey ones.  After the 2 ingredients are cooked, and sucked up all the juices, scoop half of the pesto sauce into the pan and add a little water and 2 tablespoon of cream. By the way, the pesto sauce came in the bottle that said it's ready for 5 pax. So I guess 2 of us make roughly half of the bottle. :p I made a mistake by adding in salt and the outcome was a little salty. I forgot the salami and pesto sauce were already flavored. When the pasta sauce is ready, off the fire and mix the pasta which I already cooked al dente earlier. Just mix them up and there you are.

Rome: The ancient and modern

On the day we were going to depart from Santorini, I was quite sad because we are going to need to walk a lot again. We had a quick lunch in McD when we stopover in Athens. I pulled some attentions when I uploaded this picture to facebook of me eating the Greek wrap. People were asking why am I eating McD in Europe trip? We had not much choice, we wanted a quick lunch and wifi so McD is a pretty good option available that time. I have not been eating fastfood for long and I had never tasted the wrap in Malaysia before so I can't comment if it tasted better or worse. 

When we arrived in Rome, it was already pretty late at about 4pm. Late in terms of going out to do visiting. But I already planned to go to Castel St Angelo for night photo shooting of the city and the weather seems pretty good so we checked in to hotel, dropped our bags and hopped on to a bus to go to our destination. We purchased Rome pass and it's a very good deal as we used the public transport and the 2 free tickets to any museums for 2days. The pass actually can last for 3 days. Lucky that we went because the scenery from the top of the building was really beautiful.

After having a good rest, the next day we went to some attractions. Throw coins into trevi fountain and you will be back to Rome soon.

Pantheon is a great architecture considering when it was build the technology was not present yet. There is a hole at the dome and rain can drop into the hall but there are some tiny holes to let the water flow out on the ground where the rain falls. In Pantheon also resides the first 2 of Italian kings remain.

The churches/basilica in Rome has this nice paintings and cravings on it's wall or ceiling.  The 2 pictures below was taken in Basilica of St. John Lateran.

Who goes to Rome without going to Colosseum? No one. We went there pretty late. It's a combo ticket which allow you to enter the Palatine Hill, Roman Forum and Colosseum all together. We used our Roma pass on this.

We waited till the night and the place was lighted up. There were a lot Indian illegal immigrants that sells things like umbrella, souvenirs, scarves and accessories. They are really versatile. When it rained, they will sell umbrella and poncho butwhen the sun came out, they will sell scarves and others. We saw some of them running when the police came and raid.

When we went to Vatican museums, we saw a lot of naked statues. There are some which has leaf covering the guys private parts. 

Look at that! They have a statue of a lady  breastfeeding her child!

All the roof are decorated with paintings and cravings.

We are not allowed to photograph in Sistine Chapel but my itchy hands took this. Micheal Angelo painted this on the ceiling!

After the walk in museums, we came out and went to St Peter Square and just sat, lazying around. We didn't go into St Peter Basilica just because we were not interested and the queue was damn long.

Here's the picture of the basilica. No, Pope didn't stand at the balcony on that day.

We had gelato and my hubby didn't know what is gelato until he sees it.

This is the lift that goes up to our hotel. Super small, it only fit 2 of us, 1 carry on and 1 checked in baggage. Imagine that!

OK that's all about Rome. I didn't have any photos on the food we ate. We always go for pasta and once pizza in a pizzaria.

Our first stop of Europe vacation: London

London is our first stop in Europe vacation plan. We arrived at quite late around 8pm in the hotel. Both of us were so tired to walk to find food. We settled in a shabby Chinese restaurant nearby not because we miss our local food but that's the only restaurant that still open at 9.30pm and is not a pub. The food was so bad that both of us can't finish half the plate. I have no intention to describe the menu or what we ordered here. Later we grabbed 5 litre water from the 24 hours convenient store and headed back to rest. 

The next morning we went to see Big Ben and the took this picture with the famous red double decker bus passing by. We walked around the area and short path along river Thames and took many pictures. The eye of London is also around there. Too bad I didn't capture anything using my phone. The weather was great in the morning, sun was great and picture looked great too. However later half of the morning the sun went into shades behind the cloud. After that the pictures that we took were more dull than earlier version. 

We went around to Westminster Abbey, St James Park and the Buckingham palace too. After fish and chips lunch at Bag O' Nails, we went over to the British National Museum. Before that, I want to say I hate London's food because I don't like fish and chips as they are fried food although the review of the restaurant looks pretty astonishing. We had great time in British Museum. The place has very wide range of artifacts ranging from Egypt, Assyria, Greek and many more. The mummies that are in this museums are more than what we see later in other museums. History is beautiful. We walked and sat when we saw bench. We did this a lot, which helps in keeping our legs and body last long for the whole day visit. 

There is a long wall which some parts of it missing and the title of the craving is Lion Hunt. I can't remember in which category did we see this, Assyria maybe. I took this particular picture because it is interesting seeing the lion which was shot by many arrows vomiting. I suspected it was meant to show the tiger vomiting blood after severely injured but does this really happen in real life? Maybe no.

I tried to capture a panorama shot of the British museum but the stupid stitching in my phone repeated the banner twice.

Later at night we went back to the Big Ben area but a different angle for night shots. It drizzled a little so I had to help holding umbrella to cover the camera and photographer when he was at work.

The next day, we went for stadium tour at Arsenal Emirates stadium, took us half of the day.

After lunch we went around to St Paul Cathedral and then to the Tower Bridge and stayed there until WL completed his night shot.

On our last day here, we spend the whole morning in British National museum. It was WL's favorite museum. It has a super huge dinosaurs remains (bones), whale, mammoth ..........

After lunch we just wanted to lazy around, so we took the subway to Harrods to have a look and go back hotel later on.  .

Both of us just wanted to rest because of the walking we did for the past few days and we were glad that our plan was going to Santorini next because there was where we rested and regained our energy before going to Rome. Rest early for the next morning flight.

Santorini ~ so beautiful

Santorini is the second destination of our Europe vacation. It is an island at the south of Greece surrounded by the Mediterranean sea. As I am typing this, I am watching the last color of the sunset on our last day here. Weeliem is still busy taking another sunset photos at different location from yesterday and the day before. We are in oia, the best spot for the sunset view. We stay here exactly close to the sunset view and the famous traditional oia house in white architecture and blue round roof for the chapel.

The ultimate objective of this vacation here is relax. That's why we stay in our room most of the time over looking the Caldera, houses and blue sea. We went to fira town yesterday for a short visit and had lunch at this restaurant called salt and pepper. The lady boss seems intimidating in the beginning as she didn't smile and very stern in her voice. Or maybe it is the way people talk here as in the restaurant that we patronized, we heard the waiter and waitress telling customer to sit aside not at the terrace if they don't order food. We had seen some people just left when were told that and some stayed. Another one was asking to change seat but the restaurant didn't let him to as it is too taxing is everyone is requesting the same.

Ok, aside from that we love the food here. Tasty and rich but I realize I don't like Greek salad because of some ingredients like olive and another pickled type of ingredient.

Here's some pictures.