Day 30 – Milan Expo 2015

For those who don’t know what Expo is, it’s like a giant world fair. For this one, 145 countries came together with other businesses and organisations to share their culture, food and history. Each country has a their own different building and they design it how they please. We were especially excited because Calvin had mentioned about free food. He had heard about some places having food and my girlfriend was so excited for ireland – imagine pints of milk and potatoes and wheaten bread!

We wanted to get there for 10am when it opens, even though it closes at 11pm, but we didn’t end up arriving until 12pm. It took us longer because we were still full from last night and when we got the subway, we actually went the wrong way, had to get off and go back on again.

The place was pretty empty when we arrived and it was fast and easy to get through the security and ticket desks. We got a map of the complex and I thought it didn’t look too big, until we walked on to the main street and you couldn’t even see the end of it. There was one major street down the middle with countries lining either side. Our plan was to explore one side until the bottom and come back up the other way. Sounds easy enough.

One of the first buildings was Ireland and it was awful. There were no Irish people working and we walked through a corridor to look at cows, sheep and farmers all talking about milk and farms. That was it, nothing to eat or nothing interactive. Why would anyone come to Ireland after that? The United Kingdom wasn’t much better, it had a garden with labelled plants and some metal structure that allowed u to feel the vibration of bees…?

Making our way down the right hand side, we visited everyone and looked around, always keeping an eye out for free food. So far there weren’t any but we stopped to have some Belgian chips. They stuffed a cone full of chips and we had several sauces to choose from to squirt into a wee pouch on our cone. They really were amazing and if we didn’t find anywhere else we would come back here for dinner!

We stumbled upon the chocolate and coffee buildings that contained smaller African countries and chocolate businesses like Lindt. We watched how the chocolate makers made their designs with precision details and then we allowed to taste some. At last, free food! We also walked into a chocolate tasting session. I noticed someone else ask to join so I ran over and got a box too. The box had several chocolates and we had to write down what we thought was in it and then rate things like the texture, flavours and combination on a paper. Apparently there was a 30 minute lecture on it before but we turned up at the right time to taste!

Half way down the right side and the United Arab Emirates had a massive queue that continued around the whole building. Obviously everyone knows that the UAE like to do things wild and impressive so everyone wanted to visit this. It was the first time we had to queue for longer than 5 minutes but they had supplied us umbrellas because we were in the sun. When we finally did get in, we were greeted with a tour guide who showed us hologram booths that had the problems the country faced and how they fixed it. Then we were taken into a cinema room and watched a video of a girl, who was transported back in time and saw how Abu Dhabi grew from the struggles of no water etc… The cinema then opened up and we walked through to the same girl as a hologram. She started singing a rap and every time the chorus came around, the lights came on for everyone to join in. Not saying that I would have sung, but it was all in Italian anyway. Looking around at everyone else, people were just in shock at what was happening, it was pretty embarrassing but hilariously funny. More interactive videos really left us speechless as we returned to main street, not knowing what to say, the rap was just so…different?

On the main street we had walked into a dancing street parade with little gherkins and apples, courgettes and dancing cartoon cats? What honestly is happening? We were so confused. We left when it was normal and returned to a weird disneyland party – there were men with moustaches – like that creepy man from Lazytown – that had all the kids clapping.

We kept moving on systematically through places and realised that we we had only seen a quarter of it and had spent 4 hours! We moved on and finished the side, not going to countries we had already visited in this trip, those that we doubted would offer free food and those where was literally a ridiculous line to enter. In Russia, we were given juice to try and my girlfriend got the nicer one, but he didn’t share and I started a domestic in the Kremlin. We were both just really hungry and we wanted to go to Japan to eat. It was 40 minutes to wait in the queue so we went to China, where they gave us vodka wine that actually tasted nice (for me anyway).

Finally we found a small restaurant off the beaten track and got really cheap. Everything was so expensive in here as you can imagine, so this was a great find. We continued on after dinner and visited places like the USA, Poland and Turkey, before going to this big ‘tree’ surrounded by water. It was the tree of life and there was some sort of song and dance that occurred every hour. We had just missed it but we didn’t mind and sat in the comfy spinning chairs to rest our feet.

A cyclist, kitted in full cycling gear from Team Saxo-Bank Tinkoff cycled past and at first glance I thought I knew him. It was then when lots of children were chasing him asking for autographs that I did recognise him. It was Vittorio Brumotti, a biking freestyler, famous for his tv stunts and being a bit of a tool. Regardless, I followed him too. I felt like a child chasing after him with my girlfriend looking after the bag and following me around. He was doing wheelies and silly stunts but he got a bit too cocky and kept posing for photos and talking to people. I got bored of him and so we left to finished the last quarter.

We were so tired and our feet were so sore from so much walking. Brazil didn’t help us by installing a massive suspended rope canopy that took us ages to get across. After a few more South American countries, we officially called it a night and got the metro back home. We then walked home from the metro as we didn’t know what bus to take – more walking!!

We told the boys all about our day, what to see and do and what not to go to – they are going in September. Soon after filling them in, we were so tired and fell straight to sleep. The air conditioning kept turning itself off every 15 minutes during the night and I instinctively kept waking up to turn it back on. I wasn’t a fan of this.