There was no direct flight from Bari back to London. Since there was a layover in Milan anyway, I decided to extend the layover and spend a few hours here.
But again, my flight yesterday from Bari to Milan was late. Then, I got on the wrong bus at the airport in the opposite direction by mistake. By the time I got to the city center, it was over an hour later than planned.
I didn’t make it to Monumental Cemetery in time. Last entry was at 17:30 but I got there at 17:45.
Since I’m into architecture, one of the sites I was looking forward to seeing was Bosco Verticale (meaning “Vertical Forest” in Italian). It has won numerous design awards and is said to contain a total of 900 trees, 5,000 shrubs, and 11,000 plants that cover an area of 75,000 ft2 and help to absorb carbon dioxide, produce oxygen, and provide insulation.
Piazza Gae Aulenti is not far away. This is the center of Milan’s most modern neighborhood.
Then a few more minutes of walk to Milan’s city gate Arco della Pace.
I passed Sforzesco Castle on my way back.
Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II was build during the 19th century and is one of the oldest shopping malls in the world. It was named after King Victor Emmanuel II, who inaugurated the Galleria on 9/15/1867. It’s also known for its stunning architecture, which was what I came to admire.
I did not visit Milan Cathedral and Last Supper because I was carrying a big backpack and it wasn’t allowed inside. I didn’t have time anyway and they were already closed due to my late arrival because of the flight delay. So I’d have to come back again some other time.
I went back to the airport to pick up my rental car after the short visit. There were a couple of people ahead of me at the counter. It took a long time before I finally got my car key. Since it was already late, the attendant had already left. So I had to pick up the car myself. The car was parked on the 4th floor in P2. The counter was connected to P2 via P1 but only on the 3rd and 5th floor. And the counter was on the 2nd floor.
It was like a maze and took me forever to finally find the car (the blue SUV). But the car was too big for me. I wasn’t able to adjust the seat high enough for me to see well. I had to navigate thru the maze back to the counter and ask for a smaller car because what I reserved was a compact car. But the person at the counter insisted that was a compact car. It didn’t matter though because it was the only automatic car available and that was what I needed. Last time I drove a stick shift was over 26 years ago and I didn’t think I wanted to do that again. I really had no choice.
So, driving it was such a pain because I had to stretch my neck like a giraffe the whole time in order to see better.
I finally managed to arrive at my bed & breakfast at close to 11 pm.
After I settled in, I tried to check in my flight to London but it said I was waitlisted. I paid for the ticket long time ago and couldn’t understand why I was waitlisted. This had never happened to me before. I immediately started researching other options just in case. It was after 1 am by the time I was finally able to sleep and I was up again before 3 am.
I planned to drive to Switzerland this morning but decided to leave earlier so I could get to the airport earlier to make sure I get a seat. On my way there I kept thinking about the waitlist and the more I thought about it, the more I was worried about not being able to get to London. Before long, I decided to cancel the itinerary and turned back and headed to the airport instead.
It turned out they had plenty of seats. But since I cancelled my itinerary, I had an extra five hours to spare. So I decided to go back to the city center and visit Monument Cemetery since I wasn’t able to do it yesterday.
Visiting Monument Cemetery was like visiting an art museum. Lots of statues and sculptures which I really enjoyed.
After Monumental Cemetery, I visited Chinatown before going back to the airport to fly to London.