McDonalds in Downtown Milan

This time last week my guy and I were walking the streets of Milan, Italy. I am still reeling from the fact that I was there, in the midst of all that history, culture and diversity. We took a lot of pictures and when we show them to someone we find ourselves trying to describe just how much bigger and more grand everything was. The camera couldn’t capture all that there was to see, and our words fall short in describing what it felt like to be there. But we still try!
As we entered into the main square of Milan, one of the very first things I wanted to do was to sit at a sidewalk café and sip a cappuccino and watch the people pass by. We heard so many different languages and watched as people, bicycles, cars and motorcycles lived together in a small space; people simply made room for each other.
Another thing I noticed was the fact that there were current icons like The Apple Store and McDonalds wedged into buildings that were hundreds of years old, balancing the look of new and sleek in the backdrop of timeless and historical. This was fascinating to me because I can’t imagine choosing to eat McDonalds when there are cafes offering fresh meats and cheeses, pasta and gelato at every turn; and yet there were so many people sitting on the steps of the piazza, digging into a fast food bag. I guess people often want what is familiar.
It made me think about my own habits. Am I settling for McDonalds in downtown Milan? Are there ways that I am choosing the familiar, the comfortable over what might be better? Am I willing to look a little further, to risk trying something different over always knowing what comes next? I haven’t eaten at a McDonalds in years, so we sure didn’t bother to go there while we were in Italy, but instead ordered items that were unknown, sometimes from menus completely in another language. We had a couple of things that were not our favorites and we learned about a lot of foods and customs that we would happily adopt.
I am just starting to settle down enough to reflect on our time in Europe, but one thing I know is that I want to keep asking, stretching and risking being uncomfortable over always knowing how things are going to turn out.