I have arrived

"pure and simple as the girl I love"

A bar of Carrefour's finest hazelnut chocolate and a yowling cat outside the window set the scene for the first Italian post.

After a long, yet uneventful journey from Leeds-Bradford airport to Milan Malpensa, via Amsterdam, I arrived in Milan on Saturday evening. Grey skies, yet mild temperatures, I only felt able to explore as far as the nearest supermarket (a mere 1 minute's walk).

The flat itself is lovely - it is much larger than I was expecting, with a large bedroom, narrow kitchen, narrow bathroom and a massive dining/living area. Definitely large enough for lots of people to visit. Nick, one of the previous secondees, had said it was amazing, but I hadn't quite expected this! The flat is also very conveniently located. This morning, I was ready (after an espresso, of course) to explore areas of Milan, including the location of the office. As promised, the office is indeed a 15 minute walk from the flat. That's a walk which included a meander trying to *find* the office (there's not a massive sign at the entrance, which put me off).

After finding the office, itself conveniently located (extremely close proximity to the Armani "complex"), I wandered down the Via Monte Napoleone with its high-end boutiques towards the Duomo. As you can see from the photo below, there were adverts on its scaffolding - I was quite shocked by this! Lunch at the top of The Rinascente (like a not-as-fancy Selfridges, food average, view amazing), gelato from Grom near La Scala and further wanderings eventually lead me to my home-from-home, 10 Corso Como. An amazing place. It's a suite of shops (including a cafe, which I will have to sample with T) built into a palazzo with a verdant quad. Beautiful. Expensive. Deadly. But beautiful. 10 Corso Como (and its nearby outlet) will be the reason why I return to London with no money.

Overall, the first impression of Milan is a place of, prima facie, faded glamour. The buildings are in the Italian style but grafitti pervades the city. However, it is worth noting that the best places I've found so far, albeit in my one day of exploring, have been hidden - Corso Como itself and the outlet store are oases in the middle of a surrounding area of what feels like neglect. I found a huge store filled with interesting designs and quirky objets d'art, with a tiny entrance that I could easily have overlooked. The gelateria was amazing, and cheap, and it was just hidden around a corner from La Scala. I'm hoping that this means there ought to be plenty to keep discovering throughout my sejour here.

The other first impression has been one of uneven floors. Nearly stacked it TWICE (pre-celebratory Italian cocktail) due to a slight bump in the floor and a wonky step. I'm going to have to be careful, I'm definitely due a fall of epic proportions.

As for the Italian, we can only hope for improvement. At the moment, it's like I freeze when I speak with a real Italian person, using words which aren't entirely wrong but I kick myself afterwards for not using the correct word. And it is indeed really difficult to understand when spoken at typical speed by the Italians.

Unfortunately, I didn't have my big camera with me today, but I've put some iphone photos below.

Scaffolding at Cartier - classy leopard

There was an H&M advert on the other part...

The view from my lunch table - so close to the roof of the Duomo

I couldn't NOT have a retro photo of my Aperol Spritzer!

And now, onwards. I start in the Milan office at 9.30am tomorrow morning and, as ever with a new department, the usual feeling of anxiety is rearing its ugly head. Planning on combatting this with unpacking my boxes...