A Private Weekend in Milan — The Italian Art of Disappearing for a Few Days
Let’s keep on our blog journey! There are trips we plan because we have somewhere to be, and then there are the ones we take simply because, for three or four days, we would rather be somewhere else. Preferably Italy.
Milan is my heartplace ( Venice as well!) particularly good for this kind of escape. You can arrive on Thursday evening, disappear into a beautiful hotel, eat exceptionally well, buy something you of course didn’t need, stay out later than intended and return to normal life a few days later looking perfectly respectable.
I won’t give you a list of the ten things you absolutely must see in Milan. Google has already done that for you.
I’d rather tell you how I would spend a few days here.
Choose Your Hotel Well
For a short escape, your hotel isn’t simply somewhere to sleep. It becomes part of the affair.
I like somewhere you want to return to before dinner: a beautiful bar, discreet service, flattering lighting and a lobby where nobody appears particularly interested in asking questions. Brera and the streets around the Quadrilatero make it wonderfully easy to walk out without much of a plan and allow Milan to decide what happens next.
And there is something delicious about going upstairs in the late afternoon knowing you have somewhere — or someone — worth dressing for.
See the Duomo. Then Forget the Checklist.
Of course you should see the Duomo, walk through the Galleria and, if you haven’t already, arrange to see Leonardo’s Last Supper.
Then put the itinerary away.
Milan becomes much more interesting when you stop trying to complete it. Have coffee because the café looks beautiful. Turn down a street because something caught your eye. Stay for another drink. Change your mind about dinner.
A good escape needs enough planning to make everything effortless and enough empty space for a little trouble.
The elegant kind, naturally.
Go Shopping With an Italian Woman
Milan is one of the world’s great shopping cities, and the Quadrilatero offers a dangerously efficient combination of fashion, tailoring, watches, jewellery, fragrance and Italian craftsmanship.
If we go together, however, you should know that I have opinions.
You may emerge from a dressing room on Via Montenapoleone completely convinced that a jacket has changed your life, only to find me looking at you for three seconds before saying no.
Trust me. An Italian woman’s disapproval can save a man a surprising amount of money.
Her approval, unfortunately, can be considerably more expensive.
Let Milan Misbehave a Little
Aperitivo is one of my favourite Italian rituals because nobody has quite decided what the evening is going to become yet.
One drink becomes two, dinner moves half an hour and suddenly the carefully planned evening is doing something else entirely.
I wouldn’t book every moment of your weekend for exactly the same reason. Milan has extraordinary restaurants, galleries, design, beautiful courtyards and places you could walk past a hundred times without knowing what is behind the door.
Some addresses I will happily write about.
The best ones I might prefer to whisper to you over a drink.
And If Milan Isn’t Enough…
We leave.
Lake Como is close enough to change the rhythm of a weekend completely. The city disappears, the water appears and lunch suddenly acquires the dangerous possibility of becoming an afternoon.
There is Franciacorta. There are the lakes. There is northern Italy.
With three or four days, Milan can be your destination — or merely the beginning.
What If You Were Already Coming to Italy?
This is how I began thinking about a different kind of invitation.
When a gentleman wants to meet me elsewhere in the world, there is Fly Me to You. You invite me into your city and I come to you. I love the anticipation of boarding a plane knowing exactly who will be waiting on the other side.
But what if you were already thinking about Italy?
Perhaps Milan is part of a business trip and you’re staying for the weekend. Perhaps you haven’t been here for years. Or perhaps you simply decided that three or four days in Italy sounded considerably better than three or four days at home.
You don’t need to come to Milan for me. I rather like that you don’t.
Come for Italy. Keep your meetings, see your friends, go shopping, have your time alone.
Then make part of it ours.
Fly to Me
Perhaps we have dinner. Perhaps dinner develops ambitions. Perhaps you keep twenty-four hours free and we decide where they take us.
You don’t need to give me your entire trip.
What I can give you is something different from meeting me elsewhere: my Italy. The places I love, the table I would choose, the neighbourhood I want to walk through with you and a few little addresses I have absolutely no intention of publishing online.
No tour. No package. Just an Italian woman becoming part of the Italian escape you were already planning — with all the advantages that may involve.
I call it Fly to Me — A Private Milan Escape.
If Italy was already on your mind, perhaps you now have one more reason to book the flight.
And if you’d rather stay exactly where you are?
You can always fly me to you.
Giulia Bellini
Italian Charm. International Perspective.
