Waltz of the Flowers

End of Day 2 Milan

Cue the Tchaikovsky music.

After getting to our hotel in Milan, and cleaning up, we decided to head to downtown Milan.  Referring to Rick Steves Guidebook, we decided to try to find a place to eat on Via Dante.  This is a pedestrian only road that goes from the Duomo to the Fort.

 

Rick says that the meal will be mediocre, but the people watching is great.  We ate at one of these restaurants the last time we were in Milan, and it was fine.

We took the Metro to one end of the Via and started to stroll towards the Duomo.  At one of the first restaurants, the waiter out front told us it was happy hour, and if we buy a drink, they will give us snacks.

Snacks are good!

BF tried to find out when Happy Hour ended, and didn’t get a straight answer.

Well, as it turns out, if you go into any restaurant in Italy and only order drinks, they will probably bring you snacks.  Italians don’t drink without eating something.  It is a firm and fast rule.  It may just even be a law.

But we wandered to the end, and wandered back.  This particular restaurant, the Majestic Café, was open air.  Several of the others had Plexiglas walls. 

 

They showed us to a table.  It had 2 potted begonias on the table.  BF picked one of them up, to move to a more convenient spot, and a waitress zipped past, grabbing the spare and saying “Only One Flower!”

The tables were close together and the woman at the next table was smoking.  And holding her cigarette pretty much in my face.

This is not going to be a tirade on smoking, do what you want people.  But I didn’t want a cigarette right in my face.  So we politely asked to move.

Okay, now we are the Trouble Making Americans, but they found us a different table.

With 2 potted begonias.

The same waitress zipped by again and said “Only One Flower,” and whisked off the second plant.

I ordered a glass of wine, BF ordered a glass of Prosecco.  They each came with a strawberry on the side.  And a bowl of chips, and the brightest green olives I’ve ever seen.

 

I don’t like olives, I don’t eat olives….unless I am in Italy.  These were great.  I can’t explain it, but they were almost meaty.  We scarffed that whole bowl down. 

We then ordered our dinner.

During this time, BF noticed that there were 2 flowers on the next table.  So when the waitress wasn’t looking, he moved it to our table.  She came back and just shook her head.

 

A little while later, I noticed a spare plant off to the side.  BF snuck over and moved that to our table.  We got a grin out of the waitress.  Some of the other wait staff noticed what was going on, and the next thing we knew, we had an abundance of flower pots.

Soon everyone got into the act and we had 5 potted plants, a big glass vase of fresh flowers , a potted planter with bamboo….we were all in stitches, and the other tables nearby were laughing too.

 

Claudia, our waitress, photo bombing BF

 

 

The meal we had was nice, the strawberries on our wine glasses were spectacular, so we had to have the strawberry sundae for dessert. And the entertainment was top-notch!

 If you are ever in Milan, go to the Majestic Café on Via Dante, and ask for Claudia!  She is always there.  And we had just as much fun the 2 other times we ate there.