Having only been to Shanghai’s Expo previously and visiting the ghostly remains of previous expos in San Francisco, Montreal and London, I was not sure what to expect when we visited Milan’s Expo. Milan Expo is currently running from 1 May to 31 October this year. What drew me was the food-related theme, “Feeding the planet, energy for life.”
The pavilions are organised in bays off a central pathway. A fun game is to ignore all the signs and choose which country you would like to spend the rest of your life in based on the pavilion. I promise you, you would easily find yourself somewhere you had never even planned to visit in this lifetime. Trying to guess which country would be ideal by the length of the queues to get in would also lead you astray (although may lead you to the most air conditioned pavilions). The pavilions are an excellent display of the architectural talent in each country, both bizarre and wonderful.
The Chinese bamboo pavilion has exhibition areas called “Heaven”, “Earth”, “Man” and “Harmony” and focuses on the pursuit of balance between mankind and the environment.
One of the main draws for me was Slow Food’s pavilion, artisanal food products being served, Eataly’s pavilion with each region’s traditional dishes represented (with northern Italy on the left and southern Italy on the right) and the Vino Italy section.
Vino Italy has a phenomenal a line up of the Grand Crus of Italy available for side by side tastings for a nominal fee. There are even sommeliers there to advise on tastings. Essentially at Milan Expo there is the ability to eat and drink the best from each region in Italy without the need to travel. We even saw Berlusconi (Italy’s former Prime Minister and award winner for skin colour tinted to match his hair, or possibly vice versa) who was visiting Expo at the same time.
I’ll be back when the weather is a bit cooler to do some proper professional sampling with the appropriate due consideration. All I can say in the meantime is that it’s worth the visit. Watch this space.
If you are still unconvinced whether it is worth a visit to Expo, take a look at this:
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