Milano

So that's it – seven hundred miles and we're back. The more things change the more they stay the same.

The real world beckons although in some way, compared to the rest of Italy, in Milano it is already here.

Office blocks. Trams. Mobiles phones. Gucci. Rush, rush, rush. McDonald’s. Ralph Lauren. Status. Fashion. Success.

I have learned so much but soon the city will take me over and I will feel as empty as when I arrived.

Empty.

Empty.

Nothing

It doesn’t happen. I sit in the garden by the San Siro and I understand. I understand that I have a 'real world' self and a 'cycling' self and that these are very different things. The former is not real at all but is very good at pretending to be - at work, at home, in the pub - so much so in fact that it has become arrogant and self-righteous. It is not me. It is my self projecting itself on the world.

A few months ago it was all that I wanted to be. It had the success, it had the respect and it had the girl. Then it didn’t and so it came to Milan trying to find a new destination.

It didn't find it.

I return to the Gucci shops, the Duomo and the fountains and I find him just as I left him. Two weeks of the most beautiful experiences and no answer to give.

However, I have remembered something else. Through lakes and mountains and art and God, I have revisited my natural self and found that he is beautiful. I want to live in him.

I have to come back to Milano. The journey must end and I must go back to the real. What I have realised is that the real can be beautiful as well and maybe the real me can be too. I have seen the Birth of Venus, the Sistine Chapel, Florence and I have seen that they are real – crafted by real hands and real minds – beautiful hands and minds, and that this can exist in the world and can be part of your world too.

Sometimes you have to go back to remember.

Be with me.

Be beautiful.

Bellisimo