The day after the concert was an extremely chill day. We had a 4-hour train ride to Milan and the only other thing that was planned were dinner reservations at La Gioia. After one last breakfast inside the common area at the Meininger, we were ready to checkout. While we didn’t manage to find a hotel closer to the stadium, the Meininger was surprisingly better than we expected and we had a decent stay there.

We reserved a bit of time when we got to Zurich HB to do some last minute souvenir shopping and also bought sandwiches at Sprüngli, which somehow managed to be our best food find in Switzerland. We were lucky we got to the track early as there wasn’t much luggage space on the train. However, the 4-hour journey to Milan was quite smooth. Once we arrived at Milano Centrale I could already feel how humid it was. We were lucky that Switzerland was still considered mild temperature-wise, but that luck would finally run out in Italy. 

It took us a moment to gather our bearings inside the station, but we eventually made it out and to our hotel. C-Hotels Atlantic was also much nicer and spacious than it looked from photos and we had a great stay there. After freshening up we took a 20 minute walk over to the restaurant. La Gioia was the restaurant my friends were looking forward to the most on this trip. This was also the one which required an elegant or business casual dress code and took a deposit when making the reservations. 

It was really hard trying to choose what to order from their menu. There’s a minimum of two courses per person at dinner and I ended up picking their scampi and avocado tartare and their pasta patate e vongole, which was a Tubetti pasta with potatoes and clams. I don’t have enough words to describe how amazing both of those dishes were. While I’ve had beef tartare, the shrimp and avocado combination really hit differently. Pasta with potatoes and clams was also a combination I never knew existed and I was surprised by how well it worked together. Apparently it’s more of a Southern Italian dish, but it was so flavourful that I wish it was an option you could order in restaurants here.

I don’t even know how I had space after fully licking my plates clean, but I also ordered a tiramisu for dessert. It was good we were sweating and walking a lot, cause I definitely needed to burn more calories to make space for all the pasta I would be consuming for the remainder of the trip.