Pizza, Pasta & Panini - with a lot of Gelato!

On March 21, 2025 my parents and I were so excited to explore the beautiful country of Italy. Our journey began from a 2 hour flight from John Glenn Airport to Newark International Airport. Once our flight landed my family and I went to the United Polaris Lounge. This place was not like any other lounge I have been in before. There was a buffet and a restaurant! We had lunch in the restaurant and the food was just delicious! Then I dove into all the food I could get from the buffet. After 3 hours my family and I headed to our gate. I was so excited to go to Italy I couldn’t stop smiling. The business class flight was an experience I would always remember. As soon as we reached Milan international airport we took a taxi to our hotel. I noticed how the Italians don’t care if they are speeding. A lot of our taxi drivers were driving 110 mph! I later checked and my dad told me that it was not mph but kmph. Duh!!

Our hotel, Villa Torreta, looked like a palace. As we walked in we saw the lovely garden with all the flowers. Not to mention that the entire hotel is filled with paintings from the olden times in Italy. We made it just in time for breakfast. There was a huge variety of delicious pastries and fruits. My favorite part of the breakfast was the collection of jams and mini nutella. Since we were jet lagged, we slept for 4 hours. I was so tired after waking up, I was sleeping like a bear. In the evening my family and I went to the Duomo Cathedral and climbed up to the top. The view was awesome! You could see the entire city. Then after a small pizza snack, my family and I went to the Milan Duomo Cathedral museum. We saw a lot of ancient looking statues from the beginning of earth. Some of the statues were a bit creepy. We spent the rest of the night walking through the town. At that point my feet were dying. We made it to a Michelin star Indian restaurant. The meals were absolutely scrumptious. We ended our short day by taking a taxi back to our hotel.

On Sunday March 23rd. We woke up a bit late and immediately went for breakfast. I tried the pancakes with nutella and it felt like a party in my mouth. As soon as we came back from breakfast my family and I immediately hit the bed. After a long 4 hours we woke up to go to a small cafe and explore 2 districts in Milan. While we were walking outside, I was extremely careful and cautious of pickpocketers. Thankfully, throughout the trip none of our belongings were stolen. We were in a district called Navigalli. We ate a late lunch, our first Italian pizza. We ordered 1 pizza for each of us, thinking that the pizza would be small. We were so wrong. The pizzas were huge. My parents gave up at the 4th slice. I was eating continuously. I will never waste pizza, it was so good! Then we headed to a gelato shop. I was super excited even though I was pretty full from the pizza. I got a small cup with tiramisu gelato and caffe gelato. Caffe translates to coffee in Italian. The gelato was so good, I can’t even tell you how exquisite the taste was. The mix of sweet and bitter flavors was a party blasting in my mouth. After eating we were walking around the small district. We took a cab to the further side of Navigalli. My family and I got to witness a sunset on the small river. It was absolutely beautiful. I did not like the crowds at all. It ruined the experience for simply just enjoying the great things. We ended our day by eating a light Indian dinner, once again.    

On Monday March 24th, my family and I went to Lake Como. Out of all my favorite cities we went to in Italy, Lake Como was my favorite. I just love being by water. On that day we were discovering how the train stations worked. We went to the closest train station by our hotel, Bignami Parco Nord. We were trying to purchase a train card, however the machine decided to not cooperate with us and we didn’t catch the train from this station. We asked the people around us. There was a little bit of a language barrier. There were some Italians who knew English very well, some Italians who mostly used their body language and Italians who didn’t know any English. We eventually had to take a taxi to a different and much larger train station. The train station was called Girabaldi. My first thought of how to pronounce the station’s name was Giradelli chocolate😝 We sped through the huge crowd and went to purchase tickets for the next train to Lake Como. I was so excited to sit on the train for the first time. I have sat on a train in India, but that train is nothing like the Italian trains. We sat on the train and I slept for almost the entire ride. We reached Lake Como and immediately headed straight for lunch. We had exquisite pasta. I tried Italian Pasta and it was to die for! After the amazing lunch my family and I headed to a ferry. The ferry took us around the entire lake! The boat was a bit small and there were a lot of people. I don’t enjoy crowds that much. We took amazing and scenic photos. Towards the very end of the ride my sea sickness started to kick in and my head started to hurt. The pain was washed away by an awesome vanilla gelato milkshake. The milkshake was super delicious! It had whipped cream with crumbled pieces of Biscoff cookie and vanilla Gelato with a shake! Then we went to a small shop and I saw the most outrageous thing ever! Fresh Lake Como trapped air in a can! I really wonder who came up with that idea. The even more outrageous thing is that the can was for 10 euros! That is not cheap. After hanging out in Como we walked back to the train station and caught the train back to Girabaldi. I was dead. I slept as soon as I got on the train. Then we got passes for our trips planned for later in the week. This had to be my favorite dinner. Cold pizza and banana chips! I mean almost everyone eats that. 

On Tuesday March 25th, my family and I were originally supposed to go to Venice however things took a turn. I was super sleepy and my mom wasn’t feeling too good. We took the decision to just stay in Milan for the day. We went to a small district called Porte Nova. Now with our passes we could take the train from the station that is close to our hotel. My mom wanted to go to a farmers market. I was holding on so tight to my dad’s hand. There were so many fresh vegetables! I wanted to eat all of them! Except the meat. I couldn’t look at the meat. After my mom used her business and bargaining skills to get what spices she wanted we headed to the other street market for clothes and shoes. My mom bought a small scarf. I saw a lot of toys and shoes that I wanted. I didn’t get them. We were heading to lunch. And as usual I was excited to eat. Our waitress took us to a fridge to show us what types of pastas are hand made. Obviously I had to order the spaghetti with red sauce. The food was so good! We also discovered that the Italians eat their garlic bread while dipping it into olive oil. To be honest at first I did not like the taste, later I started developing a taste for it. You could compare this to the taste of matcha. Then we took the tram back to Duomo. The tram was very crowded and there wasn’t a place for me to sit. I don’t like standing. Then we went back to a Dubai Candy shop. There were 2 floors of pure sugar. This shop was the life, I could live on candy everyday! We got a huge pack of Biscoff cookies which I was super excited to eat. And we got some small candies. Then we went to Milan Cathedral. This was the moment I realized that there were more pigeons than humans. We got to see a full flock of pigeons terrorizing little children for food. It was super cool and crazy at the same time. Then we decided to have an early dinner. We ate dinner at 4 PM! That is one of the earliest dinners I have ever had! We went to an Indian restaurant. I was super hungry and ready to dive into some delicious food. Surprisingly our food came really quick. We ordered a dish called Dosa. Dosa is an indian crepe, only with savory lentils and sauces called chutneys on the side. The dosa was super cold and very soft. My mom called out the waitress to make the food again. She came back with the food nice and hot. We ordered a few more things for the road back home. Then we headed back to the station. We went back to Bignami station and I was super excited to be back in the hotel early.  For dinner we had some spring rolls and some cauliflower vegetable mix. 

On Wednesday March 26th, we went to the great city of Piza and Florence. These 2 cities were magnificent. It started out with navigating a new train station. The station was called “Milano Centrale”, which translates to Milan Central. We were pretty early before we had to catch our train. It was a nice station. Just like the hotel, this station had old ruins in the train station with all the heritage of the Italians. I wondered why there was so much security? There were police, army people and train security. It was finally time to board our train. This train was different from the normal trains we took before. This was a high speed train. This was a 2 hour train to Rome, but my family and I got off at Florence. We sat in a Prima class. There are 3 different classes on Italian trains. Smart class seats are second class. The train offers free wifi and nice leather seats. Then there is Prima class, I sat in this class. Prima offers snacks and drinks. A footrest, which in my opinion was very useful. Finally, there is the club class. This is the first class of the train. The people who sit in that class are living a very luxurious life. In the club, the train offers personal entertainment touch screens. The train also provides snacks and sometimes meals! If I ever go to Italy again, I want to experience sitting in the club class. After a long 2 hours on a train we got off at the Firenze Santa Maria Novella, (Florence train station). This train station was even more crowded than the train stations we’ve been to. We didn’t stay in Florence for now. Instead, we took the small train to the great city of Pisa. When I say this now it’s super funny, we took the wrong train to Piza that reached at 3pm. Then we ran to a different train platform that also was awaiting a train that goes to Pisa and arrives over there at 2pm. This train ride was probably the worst ride I have ever experienced so far. I was super hungry and my head was aching so bad. There weren’t that many stops until reaching Pisa, it felt like an eternity! After what felt like a year sitting in that train we reached the great and famous city of PISA! At first I was confused how to pronounce the name of the city, is it Pisa or Pizza? My entire family was starving, so we went to an Indian restaurant. At this point I realized that we ate more Indian food than we did Italian food😜 As soon as my family and I entered the restaurant, we were determined to eat as fast as we possibly could. We had to eat really fast because we had a tour of the leaning tower of Pisa at 3pm! The food was absolutely delicious! Although I did have to say it was a bit spicy for my tongue. We walked as fast as we could to the leaning tower. I can’t walk in a straight line, I almost knocked down a bike. As we got closer to the tower the more tilted the street was getting. At last we reached the No.10 most popular world monument in the world! I loved how neatly the place was kept. There was fertile grass instead of actual grass, the grass keeps shining even during the darkest days! We took some photos and then we went in line to enter the tower. The lady who scanned our tickets told us to go put our bags in the lockers. I wondered why we couldn’t just carry them with us? I realized after a couple of weeks that the tower is 854 years old and it’s falling to the ground. I was super excited to climb the tower and I zoomed through the first 251 steps while my parents were taking their sweet time on each and every step. When we reached the top view, climbing those steps was worth it! You could see the entire city of Pisa! When we came back down the 251 steps it was so much easier to go down. Once we reached the ground level we got our bags and took some more pictures before leaving the city. There was a Pisa cathedral which my family and I wanted to visit, but we didn’t have enough time. We walked back to the station and took the train to Florence. Once we reached Florence we only had 2 hours to roam around as much as we could. First, we searched for a gelato shop. I can not live a day without sugar! After some time we reached the Gelato shop. I got the chocolate chip gelato and the custard cream. This had to be the best gelato I had so far. I loved how creamy, sweet and flavorful the custard cream was. After eating some delicious gelato, my mom took us to a small street market, she bought another scarf. I felt like we didn’t have enough time to spend in Florence. Then we took the high speed train back to Milano Centrale. We reached our hotel at almost 11 pm!  We had walked over 16,000 steps in one day! To me that is insane. 

                                              

On Thursday March 27th, my family and I stayed in the big city of Milan. That was our last day in Italy. I was super sad that we only had one day left. We had a nice breakfast and got ready for the day. We went to the Leonardo Da Vinci Science and Technology museum. To be honest, I wasn’t too excited about learning on vacation. We got to see how modern day inventions were evolving as time went on. There were so many things to learn about at this museum. After a long 2 hours in the museum, which I didn’t like, we headed to lunch. We had panini’s. The dish was so good! We also ordered a mango cheesecake! I love my dessert! After we were done eating we walked to our last super tour. It was a really hot day outside. We went to check if we could check in early to our tour. The lady at the front desk said that we had to come back 2 hours later! I couldn’t wait that long! There we were sitting outside for 2 hours in the hot sun. As the hour went on it got a bit cooler, but that didn’t change the fact that I was having a massive headache. Annoying the pigeons was my only entertainment. After a long 2 hours we finally started our tour. We had to wear these headsets that connected to our tour guide’s main speaker so we could hear him. He spoke in Italian and then English. We saw 2 paintings and that was the tour. I thought that this tour was going to be much more interesting, but it wasn't really worth the time, especially since this tour was booked until May! After our tour, we walked to a pizza shop to have our dinner. We packed the pizza and headed to the train station. From the local station we reached Girabaldi station. We were originally supposed to catch our train, but we had to make a stop at the food court. I had my final gelato of the trip. The shop we went to was called Venchi. This shop had a 4.8 star rating! Once we went into the shop I could already tell why the shop had a high rating. The gelato tasted delicious! I got the blueberry cheesecake! We took the train back to our hotel and ate our cold pizza! That was the end of our glorious trip. 

I have to say that trip was probably one of the best moments and vacations I have experienced. I have so much gratitude for my parents for organizing and making this trip possible. Overall this trip is a great memory I will always cherish! I really hope to visit the great country of Italy again and explore even more than I did during this trip. Thank you for reading.