When my sister came to stay: Part 3 Monza


Here's the thing.

I live in Biassono. A little inconsequential town with a few shops and even fewer people. I like it, but you know it's no Milan.

However, I do happen to live right next to the biggest walled park in Europe. Don't underestimate this accolade- it's massive!

So massive in fact that it not only contains feilds upon  feilds, an open swimming pool,  a royal palace, a 30 foot sculpture, but also a race track where last weekend the Italian Grand Prix was held - pretty impressive for a little town in the north of Italy! I will post about that too I promise but for now it's all about me and my sister.

I don't think we really have anything like it in England (forgive me if I'm wrong) so naturally it's on my list of things to show visitors. My sister was actually quite excited to see the autodromo (race track) but I think that was mainly so she could make her boyfriend jealous.
But I mean without the cars (and Lewis Hamilton) it's not really anything special
There was only one problem...it was raining. But, like the true English we were, we donned our coats and headed out into the rain.

In my logic, I thought it was a good idea to wear shorts, despite the weather because usually, when it stops raining it's really hot and muggy.

We must've looked like a right couple of idiots- my sister was even wearing flipflops! The only shoes she had bought with her. Who just brings flip flops with them on holiday?! I don't even live anywhere near the beach! They weren't even good ones, just free from a street pastor on the night out so we had to keep stopping for her to put them back together.

Prada aint got nothing on this!
But we had fun nonetheless, our planned picnic becoming a quick lunch of piadine and fruit under the drizzle.

I don't care that we looked like plonkers
Some kind of insanity took hold of us and we decided to walk the rest of the way into Monza.

Well, I mean we were already halfway there...

Two hours later...

But actually it was quite a nice walk. We weren't in any rush (I mean how fast can someone walk anyway in flip flops?!) the rain had stopped after a while and we chatted all the way.

But we were pretty exhausted and upon finally reaching the town, we took a well deserved rest in the square.




Monza was pretty deserted that afternoon (Italians have some kind of phobia of going out in the rain) so we took a nice, peaceful wander around the old streets after our legs had recovered.



I really love Monza.It's small but so very pretty with it's cobbled streets and pastel coloured buildings. Slightly dodgy at night though so watch out if you're a girl alone because men probably will try and speak to you, or at least shout ciao bella.


Of course we couldn't do too much walking without another break so we went to sit down at my (so far) faveorite place to have an apertivo, right by the river.  The owner is a crazy italian and the atmosphere of being by the river and despite the location, aperitivo here is only 5 euros. A very tasty price considering normally there is also a buffet included. For some reason there wasn't that day but that was fine by me as we would be eating pizza later anyway.


There's no menu here (that seems to happen a lot in Italy) so you just tell them what you want and they'll tell you if they've got it or not. I would recommend the Spritz, it's yummy! Careful though, it's strong and you don't want to be drunk before dinner!

The owner is also totally crazy which is an added bonus.

Talking of dinner, our next stop was Trattoria Caprese.

I've mentioned it before but I'm going to mention it again because it's so good. I take all my visitors here, because it's your typical crazy Italian and they do good pizza (and it's also the only place I've been in Monza so at least I know it's good!).

We were pretty early by Italian standards- 7 pm is still too early for dinner in Italy- so we didn't have to wait for a table (normally there are queues out the door).

I went for salsiccia (a type of sausage) and friarelli which I can describe only as being like grass,which doesn't sound very appetising but in small amounts compliments the salsiccia perfectly.


We skipped pudding, being stuffed from our Pizzas, even having to take some home because I couldn't just waste it! -well I'm not going to let is just get thrown away! (also I rather like cold pizza).

We had an espresso though, to wake us up from the mountain of carbs we had just eaten. And then... they gave us a free shot of Meloncello- like limoncello but melon flavoured...obvs.


taking the rest home 
Wholly satisfied after a relaxing day composed of mainly eating and drinking and a bit of wandering in between, we headed back to the bus stop to take us home ready to rest for our next adventure.


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