Our semi-whirlwind stay in Milan ended with one last visit to the Milano Centrale train station. Upon checking out of the hotel, they arranged a taxi for us and off we went. We decided to stay close to the airport for the night to make tomorrow’s travel a little easier. Our destination of choice is the town of Casorate Sempione.

Casorate Sempione is a small town just a stone’s throw away from Malpensa airport. It may be a small town, but it was cute, had a nice hotel with an awesome restaurant and very friendly people.

Anyways, our train was a regional one with many stops along the way. The good news was the regional trains come into the Milan station on tracks off to the side, so it was much less congested and frantic. In fact, between trains, it was downright quiet.

When the train arrived, we waited for most of the people to board before we hopped on. Our first stop is just 10 minutes away in Rho-Fiere, so we opted to stand with our luggage.

Our second train from Rho-Fiere to Casorate Sempione arrived right on time and we had about a 30 minute ride from there. When we arrived, a call to the hotel had the hotel shuttle on the way to pick us up. While we were looking for the phone number, a very nice young woman asked if she could help us with anything before her ride arrived. We didn’t need her help, but we thanked her for the offer.

The shuttle arrived at the hotel and we were thankful that we hadn’t walked. While it was only a few minutes, walking on the road dragging a suitcase was not included in our last day’s itinerary.

The hotel is called Osteria Della Pista and it has been around since 1875. They’ve modernized it, so we were quite happy. It is family owned and was just what we were looking for.

When we checked-in, we made reservations for dinner in the evening and for the airport shuttle in the morning.

Our room was not as big as some of the others along the way, but it was clean, comfortable, had a nice shower and air conditioning. On top of that, there was a nice bar and a wonderful restaurant.

After cleaning up and changing clothes we headed down to dinner. On this Friday evening, it seemed like everyone in town was joining us. It was great to see couples and families filling the restaurant along with some obvious hotel guests. We enjoyed being seated right among the village folks, not put off to the side in the guest corner.

As for our dinner, what a nice way to finish off our holiday.

We started with our ever present glass of prosecco, made even better by the accompaniment of homemade potato chips. Honestly, I would have been happy with the remainder of the prosecco bottle and additional baskets of chips. But then I would have missed out on the rest.

We started with a small appetizer pizza with prosciutto, mushrooms and artichokes, then moved on to our entrees. Sue had tagliatelle with truffles and I had fusiolini with shrimp in a spicy arrabbiata sauce.

Everything was delicious and went well with a nice bottle of Dolcetto D’Alba.

Then came dessert, Sue had the tiramisu, while I chose a chocolate torte that was decadently good.

Needless to say, we really enjoyed the evening and the meal. We also loved all the ‘Buono Seras’ throughout the evening as people came and went.

It was easy to see why so many people had recommended the restaurant to me. The food was delicious, the price was more than reasonable and the atmosphere was outstanding.

We turned in early as we have an 8:00 am shuttle to catch in the morning.

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For those who have been following along, you’ve seen the word ‘delicious’ used quite frequently. It’s not because I left my thesaurus at home, it’s because…well… everything was delicious !

All along our travels, whether the meals were gourmet or more rustic, they were prepared using fresh regional products, homemade ingredients and were prepared exactly how we ordered or as they were described on the menu.