I wear a long dress, I don’t put on socks even though it’s winter. After all, the occasion requires the best version of me. Usually I like not to appear and I like to spend little money. I think the real luxury is the possibility of not offering a kidney for a cocktail or a plate of pasta. This time, however, I change scenario, I want to understand what it feels like to overlap your legs sipping – here you don’t gobble – drinks that exceed 20 € in luxury hotels in Milan.

Before approaching this glossy tour, I ask myself some questions about the concept of luxury. Whether this is linked to an exclusive, unique, rare and unreachable experience. Or if it is something to flaunt, that anyone can evaluate, without the need for a particular hedonistic vein. Pippons that I don’t have time to go into. Luxury calls me, and certainly does not know these mental lucubrations. Because in these places the cash commands, the one that with the favorable exchange of Russians and Chinese sweeps us away quickly. Among tourists bent by the weight of shopping and design, glossy American Express and saxophone background music, in Milan stopping to drink in luxury hotels takes on these forms, which I share with you here.

Geographically speaking, the 5-star hotels are almost all located in the central area: between Duomo, Montenapoleone, Missori, San Babila we find the fort of wealth. Luxury is first of all comfort. For this reason we find a strong phalanx also in the Repubblica area, for those who, even if passing through, do not give up important carpets and majestic entrances. The distances are not for sure a problem, to drink in all these places I move in blue car.

How to recognize a luxury hotel. The presence of cars over 100 k is a first sign. Shiny, immaculate, in line, the luxury car stops in front of the luxury hotel. Mathematician. Don’t take pictures in front of the Ferraris, though. Don’t make your friends guess which one is yours. Second clue: luxury hotels always have a flashy, bright, imposing, powerful facade. It always feels like Christmas in front of these hotels. Third clue, but not the last: if you hear several languages spoken at once, then you’ve come to the right place.

Drinking at the counter of these hotels, honestly, was not like drinking at the counter of big hotels in New York or London. The level of service and customer care is not that high. Beyond the useless refills of water and snacks, which generally come by default in a good cocktail bar, I have not often found beyond the counter a professionalism appropriate to the price of the luxury experience, or of an experience out of the ordinary. Because in these bars get ready to pay for a cocktail from 20 to 30 €. And to think that the concept of American bar was born exactly in the high-end hotels. Sometimes with a more chic touch, sometimes with more trashy notes, luxury – give it your own meaning – will be found in Milan in this list.

Translated by Sila Turku Askin