I tend to talk about Ice Cream, Gelato, a lot when I am in Italy.

It is, as though, a holiday can only be measure by how good the Holy Trinity – of Gelato, Birra and History have been. I’ve already confirmed how good the beer is in an earlier post, and to be honest, Milan’s history is passing me by on this trip – but there is still plenty of space on this blog to cover gelato.

I prefer to seek out an indie where possible – it can have multiple branches in the same city; but that’s about it.

Unless I am in the north of the country. Then I seem to have found a default yardstick, by which to measure all others – Grom.

Grom is a massive chain. It hasn’t hit the UK yet, but it’s found its way to New York and Paris. It has its betters. It has a lack of punch in some flavours, seemingly missing the rough cuts of fruit or nut – but it is consistent. Very consistent. And it at least plays by the seasons – changing its range based on the ingredients of the time.

The chain has a touch of bluff about it. References to a back story and the building of a commercial family, but for all that – its gelato, nor its staff – will ever let you down.

If you can find a good indie, then do so. If you can’t – then take consistency over everything else.

There are three things that Hamley’s always seems to have on sale as you walk through the door.

Firstly there is the oil board that changes colour when you mark it with a plastic stylus. The other is a plane you throw and it comes back to you. The final thing is a small, spider like toy that you throw at a window and it slowly climbs down.

There is something similar in Milan, as there was earlier this year in Rome. It is a tomato with a face, that when you throw it on a hard surface it “squashes”, before quickly regaining its shape. It’s basically tat. The sort of tat that a small child would want, then get bored of once they realise – that’s all it does.

There’s clearly a king of tat in Italy – pushing his rubbish, through a network of immigrants, out on to the main tourist worn streets. One only imagines the meetings they have to determine what tat to sell. The fake bags, wallets and belts make sense – but squashed tomatoes must surely have a very small target audience?

There is another group of looky looky men who offer you a free bracelet, before their accomplices come up and try to charge you. The mark points out that his mate was given them away for free – before the two try to get a bit tetchy about language and that they now have to pay. I dread to think how many have been caught out this way. Thankfully the two I saw managed to get away, wallet intact.

That goes beyond selling tat – that’s downright theft

Princi.

Hidden on a side street, just out of site of Milan’s impressive Duomo, is Princi.

Princi is a bakery. It was recommended to me ahead of this trip by Gino De Blasio – firstly through tweets he’d sent from his own Milanese excursion, and then via email to make sure.

Princi is a long, thin bakery with a counter, which is split in to five sections, which runs the length of the unit.

When you walk in you will see the bread piled high in the window. Next is a patisserie area with cakes, pastries and flans of all varieties – containing cream, fruit and lashings of chocolate. Next are the pizzas and focaccias, sold – as appears to be the way in Milan – by the kilo. The customer chooses what they want, makes hand gestures to show how much they want – and the slice is weighed; a price confirmed.

Next up is an area of pasta, rice and antipasti – before the counter ends with a coffee bar, serving more pastries and croissants. It really is a counter that could feed you all day long – but for the fact that just one slice of pizza is more than enough for this traveller – which for the record was prosciutto and Brie.

One added bonus is that if you sit at the coffee bar end, you even get to see them fire the bread in the ovens – positioned behind a spectator friendly, glass wall.

I’m not one for going back to places when on a short holiday, but I think I might make an exception for Princi. It really was that good!

Princi – Piazza XXV Aprile 5, Milan

Let the train take the strain.

That was Sir Jimmy’s advertising catchphrase. As though all other forms of transport were a hardship.

I love catching the train in Italy. I love watching the countryside roll by as I stare, transfixed at the rolling landscape as it flashes past my window. What makes it all the better, is that I usually travel first class – especially on the regional trains.

Yesterday, as I stood in front of the ticket machine, trying to buy a ticket to Milan, from Bergamo, in Italian – I noticed that the difference between first and second class was €1. A 50 minute journey with only a euro’s difference in class? Why are people even bothering to travel second class?

Admittedly first class is nothing more than extended legroom and a plug for my iPhone – but still. It hardly seems worth the trouble travelling any other way.

Let the train take the strain – without any fear of breaking the bank. Why do we stand for anything less back home?

It’s not hard.

Well, technically it is.

Why do the Italians always seem to pinch the toilet seat? It doesn’t matter what city it is, the class of the establishment even – the toilet seat always seems to be missing.

I can only assume that there is an Italian equivalent of the Beastie Boys – with toilet seats hanging round their necks.

Why else would a country choose not to provide them?

I’m sat in a pub. It’s the brew pub of Birrifico Lambrate.

The place is packed. The music loud. Conversation is bouncing off the walls, the people – as though they are tuning forks – hitting a perfect note.

It’s a great pub to sit in, selling a range of beers that have, thus far (four different styles) hit the spot; every time.

The thing with these beers is that they are all five euros. That’s right. Five euros. Yet there are drinkers spilling out on to the street, firing beer, after beer, after beer down their necks – here in Italy – a country supposedly squeezing their economy tighter than the one back home.

But then, does anyone baulk at the idea of paying €5 – roughly £4.20 in old money? Not a jot. Strange that. We still argue the toss back home when forced to pay more than £3 a pint. THE CHANCELLOR IS STEALING OUR MONEY the emails and tweets shout. Tax is a dirty word in beer circles. The cost of beer is a crime, the petitions claim.

But why then, am I sat here spending more than I would back home? Why were people rushing to pay £5 a pint, no, £14 a bottle (at last update) for a beer in Leeds?

Maybe, because everything good has a price. We may consider that price too high for average beer, for OK beer – but does anyone really stop to think whether they should hand over their money for great beer? Ask yourself that question, next time you buy a foreign beer at an overly inflated price – just because you are drinking it at home.

Is the argument not the same? Does George Osbourne only rob us blind on boring brown beer?

It’s over simplifying, but that’s what happens when beer and choice are involved

Me.

Seems strange to think that someone might have a fear of themselves, but this flight kind of confirms that to be true.

I don’t fear me, as in another me – I just fear the silence in my head. The empty rattling; soon to be replaced by the over thinking.

What if I have a moment. One of those, heart racing, trapped by the window – no one’s hand to hold kind of moments. Amy told me to squeeze the knee of the person beside me. A man, with a patchy beard and distinct, mouth breathing style. He might not wake, but if he did – it could lead to an altogether different form of panic.

I’m trying to read – trying to wash away the negative chatter, with brilliant writing (Rob Smyth & Georgina Turner’s “Jumpers for goalposts”). It’s working, well – almost. If it was, I wouldn’t be writing this.

It’s daft. The full emotions of the day have been daft. Upset at leaving Amy and Lauren, worry I might have a moment I’ve not experienced for two years now. Writing helps, but what happens when I press save?

Woody Allen would most probably have depicted the inside of my head as a room, chock full of men in badly fitting grey suits, desperately walking round telling him to calm down – as he fires machine gun sentences at nobody in particular.

I just wish someone would open a door and let the grey suits out. Anything for a minute’s peace and quiet.

Anything for a moment’s companionship with someone other than me

You meet them.
You fall for them.
You think you’ll never be able to live without them.
And then, just like that, you let them go.
They let you go!

Holiday romances are strange, intoxicating relationships that can last a week; yet still live in the memories for a lifetime.

I technically fell for Amy over two “holidays”. Firstly on a long weekend in Glastonbury; then in a hotel in Shirley, West Midlands. She on a training course, me hiding from the world.

Thankfully our romance lasted in to the real world, but tonight, memories of another holiday romance came flooding back.

I first fell in love with Tipopils in Ma Che Siete Venuti A Fa, Rome. It was one of two bars I drank it in – the other being Bir e Fud, the bar across the road. It was a beer I’d read about, a beer others had eulogised about. A beer I found a reason – my Mum’s birthday – to go to Rome for.

As I drank that beer, I instantly understood what the others had been going on about. This wasn’t just a good beer, or a great beer. It was the right beer. The right beer for my holiday. The right beer to drink with Amy. The right beer to bring back for others – the right beer to drink back home.

So imagine my delight when I found out that someone had done just that. Brought my holiday love, to Leeds, for me to drink.

Only. It wasn’t the same. It was different. As though a filter had been removed from a camera lens; leaving me to see my holiday romance for what it was – just a beer.

Had I built it up too much? Was I distracted because I was out with friends? Or, was it simply just a fraction too warm that it lost that certain sparkle? It’s never easy replicating the conditions of one bar, one beer to another, so I won’t dare criticise the efforts made – but the beer that sat before me just wasn’t the same.

Fret not. For tomorrow I head to Milan, where I know I will find Tipopils. More so, I may well spend a lot of Saturday, actually at Birrifico Italiano embracing not just my holiday love, but a number of her sister beers as well.

Will it be different? I hope so. Will I remember it exactly as it was? I bloody well hope so. But then, there really is only one way to find out…

Cheers

I’m sat here, on the lunch of the day before, thinking about where tomorrow will take me.

Italy, actually.

See, I am off to Milan on what could only be described as a dream holiday for an over thinking, fidget like me: Three days, three cities. And some! You can’t beat that sort of movement around a place to allow a traveller to get completely lost; in a fug of sites, football, food and beer.

Whenever I suggest to Amy that we go to Italy, she always reminds me not to go mad with the itinerary. Not to try and shoehorn in as many stops along the way. Why see one city when there are five you can do on one stretch of a Trenitalia line?

Amy. Hmm. I haven’t mentioned my family yet. My darling wife, loving daughter – no, they’re staying behind. This is a me trip. A ME in bold capitals.

It’s all linked in to that other site I write, Parla Calcio? When I picked a team to follow, to write about – in the misguided hope it would strengthen my language skills – I told myself I would have to see them in the flesh to make it worthwhile. That was last August. Now, here in May, Pro Vercelli (the team) are about to embark on their biggest game since 1948. Beat their opponents over their next two playoff games, and that will be them, back in the second tier of Italian Football, since a time before my parents were born.

So I’ve booked my flights, booked my hotel and I have, via Facebook at least, confirmation that I have a ticket for the game on Sunday. But I fly out tomorrow? That leaves a fair chunk of time between now and then.

So here is how I plan to fill it: a trip to the Duomo (cathedral), a list of bars to visit, a park to sit in, a shopping arcade to drink coffee in, a beer festival to the north of Milan, another football match in Verona and a return trip to Vercelli – to see I Leoni (The White Lions) play. There’s even a thought, way back there in my head, that it would be great to get up and see the start of a stage in the Giro d’Italia (Italy’s answer to the Tour de France) in a neighboring town – but I think that would be pushing it. As the weather doesn’t look great, chances are, the weekend will descend in to nothing more than a relaxed pub crawl around the metro routes, as I consider my next food option.

But then, I’ll need to keep busy; need to keep the mind active. This is the longest I will have been away from Amy in four years. Longest I’ve ever been away from Lauren. I know it’s not necessarily the done thing to talk about going on a “lads” dream holiday of beer and football, and then come across as a daft, soft git of a husband; father. But is what I am these days. It’s hard not to be a bit downbeat about the time and distance between us.

Sure I’ll enjoy it. But would I enjoy it more if my family were there? Short answer: No (it’s hard to drink and watch football with a three year old in tow). But it doesn’t mean I won’t, for a moment at least, wake up in a single room with no one to cuddle and wish they were both there.

Then I’ll have another beer and forget all about them. Isn’t that right, lads? Lads? Lads?

Oh who am I kidding?

If you followed my Il viaggio posts to Rome in March, expect a similar approach of short – regular updates here.

This is the postcard where I just dump stuff.

The parts, and places, that didn’t quite get the time – or warrant the attention of their own, individual postcard.

The disappearance of Cacio e Pepe from the average restaurant/tourist menu was rather disappointing. Travellers clearly no longer see the want or the value in plain pasta, cheese and ground pepper.

You’re as, if not more likely to get foreign beer in the restaurants and trattorias near the main sites.

I still absolutely adore eating a sweet, sugary cornetto for my breakfast – it’s why I’ve smuggled some back with my shampoo.

What ever connotations and historical wrongs that may be associated with the Vittorio Emanuele II Monument – it is still, day or night, one of the most impressive buildings I have ever seen.

Frascati is definitely only worth drinking in Lazio.

I think I prefer using the dirty, horrible but quick and regular transport of Rome than London. Fact it costs €1 for a 75 minute journey sells it to me.

Graffiti is as much alive today as it was in Ancient Rome. Just not as political – nor offering any kind of message.

There really is no such thing as garlic bread in Italy.

Romans appear to have no time for Ugg boots.

That it’s easy to spend a lot of money, very quickly, if you can see something famous from where you eat.

That you can never eat too much salami.

That Fritti Romana is as good a style of food as any – when you are really in the mood for it.

That the crema on the coffee in Caffe Sant’Eustachio is so luxuriant that it makes the normale look like Macchiatos.

That Pistachio is still king of the Gelato!

That it’s good to go back somewhere after four years – and still enjoy the food (Da Bucatino, Testaccio)

That Naples pizza, any pizza, is just Rome’s poor relation.

That there must be one person controlling the tat sold by the lookie-lookie men.

That a great number of people signing epetitions over the price of a pint in the UK, would turn a blind eye to how much one costs in the better bars of Rome.

That I’d love a big bowl of pasta for dinner tonight. Even though we are now back in Leeds.

That I could bore you to tears with how good LLK has been this week.

That Rome is not the only love I have reaffirmed this week.

And there it is – and so, for the final time this trip:

Ciao