Day 82, 15.6.23
Modena to Milan
So this morning, after the ok from the lovely vets, we carried on to Milan.
Since we got caught in the Bath LEZ, we have been conscious of the same type of zones on our travels. Milan has just extended it’s ZTL, (they now have an outer and inner zone – Traffic Limiting Zone) and it starts right on the entrance to our chosen stop. This meant no room for error!
Yes, you’ve guessed it, not only did our satnav take us into the outer zone, it took us into the inner zone too – we were the only big vehicle trying to get through the narrow streets. When you are driving on tramlines you know the satnav had done you again 
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Mrs Stress-head was panicking and Mr Cool-as-a-Cucumber said not to worry, we’ll just pay the fine. Eventually we arrived at the camperstop called Area Sosta Milano Navigli. Park4night link.
It was too hot to go to the centre so we hung around the van for a few hours until it had started to cool down.
In the meantime we went online and paid a €5 ZTL ticket which hopefully will get us out of trouble 
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Anyway, this camperstop is on the canal and right across from it is the tram stop. It’s about 20 mins to get to Milan Cathedral which was brilliant but it’s not what you’d call nice!
The Cathedral is breathtaking, it took approx 600 years to complete 
and is a mix of gothic and renaissance architecture. You have to look close to see all the detail which is just amazing. The door was brass and had little shiny bits where people have rubbed it over the years 
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It’s just lovely all around, front, back and sides. The piazza it stands in is huge so you can get a good view even when it’s busy.
Leading from the piazza is the shopping centre Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.
It’s the oldest active shopping arcade in Italy, full of glorious brass and mosaic flooring, glass ceilings and beautifully painted facades. You can find all the big names here too. Coming out of the back you can visit the museum of Leonardo da Vinci who lived in the castle here for many years and in the Square there is a statue of him.
Milan is a big busy place but the traffic is very respectful of pedestrians. In the park, there were lots of dogs not on leads who just followed their owners with just a sneaky glance in Meg’s direction. We think that the Milanese are very cool and polite, so of course their dogs behave the same 
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We wandered around the castle and then into the park. It was fab to see it so busy, full of all ages enjoying the evening warmth. We spotted a triumphal arch which apparently was commissioned by Napoleon.
Gareth had spotted a Chinatown area and then had a hankering for Chinese food.
We chose a restaurant with a cooling fan, Meg loved the cool floor and went to sleep while we ate. There were different choices on the menu to what we were expecting but it was delicious. We had a katsu curry, mushroom and noodle broth, mushroom dim sum and thought we were getting vegetable spring rolls but instead got a beef dumpling haha, we ate it anyway.
We were quite far from our tram stop and then realised our tram ran close to the restaurant, result. They also run every 11 minutes 
. The journey was a bit longer on the way back, but much cooler and it had started to rain. It was heavenly walking in it with no coat or brolly.
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