Being back in Milan for our first full day was quite an interesting one, starting off with my realization that I have become a true croissant snob. My croissant experience before this trip was pretty minimal I’d say – just getting a casual Oakland Bakery one after every Tuesday morning Pathfinder meeting, but that is about it. Yet, throughout this entire trip my breakfast always consists of a croissant, fruit, and possibly a strawberry yogurt cup if I’m feeling really frisky one day. When we were in Milan and the start of the trip I saw nothing wrong with Hotel Sempione’s croissants at breakfast, but now that I have been to two other hotels I realize that Sempione needs to step. up. their. game. Sorry about that, but I think no blog can fully be mine if there are no extensive rants every so often.

Our first official plan for the day was a fashion walking tour of Milan that although was interesting, didn’t seem to me very educational/informational. The main stop of the tour was a well-known department store in the Milan fashion district called Excelsior. One of the store managers took us through every one of the seven floors – from the basement that was like an Italian Wegmans grocery store to the top floor where they displayed all kinds of accessories including purses that I SWEAR looked like crinkled paper lunch bags (which I must say really disturbed me that people actually buy those, yet I also have real respect for the mad genius who even thought to create them). In Italy I have found that lot of high-end stores, including Excelsior, will be decorated as if the articles of clothing are like works of art in a gallery. When spending a significant amount of money on an item, customers expect an entire shopping experience, rather than the classic “get-in-get-out” approach. There is an entire world around luxury clothing that I was aware of before coming on this trip, but genuinely didn’t even have knowledge that scraped the surface of what it truly is – and I feel like Plus3 has really opened my eyes to it.

After a group lunch with the entire group, a small group of us decided to use our free time to walk and shop around. I had heard of a popular European makeup store called Kikos and forced them to come along with me so I could look inside one of their stores. Since I consider myself a makeup collector at this point with the amount that I own, I am really picky about what things I add to my collection – something needs to have some sort of sentimental value or really impress me to convince me its worth purchasing. In the store, no actual makeup met those standards, everything seemed pretty standard, but we came across this moving robot and ended up finding out that you could personalize certain makeup products for free! So I decided to purchase a makeup brush for myself and had “Plus3 2018” with a picture of the Milan duomo layered onto the metal to remember this trip. As the makeup nerd I am, the new customizing technology blew my mind so much that I had to talk about it here – the brush was definitely one of my favorite things I’ve bought during the trip.

Back at the hotel we had our final “site visit” which wasn’t really visiting a site, but more of a presentation. A woman from Velasca Milano – a Italian shoe company – came to talk with us who works with the company’s digital media to manipulate the brand’s message in order to attract their desired target market. Her presentation focused a lot on knowing your ideal customer and using the “made in Italy” stamp to attract an international market. I was incredibly impressed with the woman’s business savvy and presentation skills – basically, she’s who I want to be when I grow up. She was able to get me, a 19 year old girl, excited about an older man’s shower company… and that’s pretty darn impressive.

Then, to close out the night, we decided to venture back into the city center to eat dinner – which turned out to be the best dinner I have had on the trip thus far, not because of the food, but because of the wait staff. At this point, I have mostly come to terms with the fact that us American students stick out like sore thumbs, so the best is when the locals will make a joke out of our foolishness rather than giving us dirty looks. To give you all one of the many funny stories from dinner – we first have to define what a rocket salad is. “Rocket salad” is a term I have heard quite a few times while traveling through Italy and it literally is just a bed of arugula – no dressing, no other toppings, basically it should not even be called a salad. When my group and I ordered bruschetta as an appetizer, the crostini was placed on top of a rocket salad, just like how American restaurants may garnish a plate of unhealthy food by putting it on top of a bed of lettuce – you would never eat the lettuce so we didn’t even think to eat the rocket salad… but boy were we wrong. A waiter came to clear our plates for the main course and looked blankly at us for what seemed like an eternity and eventually asked us why we hadn’t eaten the salad. Then yet ANOTHER waiter felt the need to come over and tell us the rocket salad is an Italian delicacy and was the best part of the plate – insisting we eat it. My friends and I were so caught off guard because we have ordered bruschetta quite a few times while on the trip and would like to think of ourselves as somewhat bruschetta experts – but apparently this entire time when we have ordered it and not eaten the rocket salad we have been doing nothing short of insulting the Italian culture.

So the lesson of the day is: always eat your greens kids.