The friend I went to Milan with this summer had been before. She told me that it was boring, that there was nothing to do but shop. We did shop, but we also walked for miles down cobblestone streets and went out for luxurious lunches and ate dessert in a bakery that could have been in a Disney princess movie and drank Campari in the middle of the day at bars where no one spoke English. It certainly wasn’t boring, I was actually having a lot of fun drunkenly running around doing whatever I wanted in this big, sexy, magical city. But when a stunning, skinny Milanese woman wearing the most elegant, breezy sweatsuit I’d ever laid eyes on shot me and my many shopping bags a familiar dirty look, I realized I was being one of those people I angrily bump into whenever I’m trying to walk down Broadway. The same people I see through the window of Chanel on 57th sipping champagne or having lunch at Balthazar on a Tuesday. I was being a tourist, something I could never dream of being in my city, and it felt amazing. So even though I’m sure you’ve never wondered, how can I act like a tourist in Milan?, this is the answer.
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