Any tips for how to spend 4 hours in Malpensa airport between an early morning arrival from the US and a connecting flight to Naples? I'd be especially interested in (1)whether there are any restaurants/cafes that are out of the ordinary and (2) whether there are any lounges I can buy my way into.
Thanks in advance-

I will politely apologise in advance if my comment may not appear to be constructive, but Malpensa clearly is one of the most depressing and miserable airports I have ever set foot in - and I normally quite like airports.
Malpensa has a kind of stark architecture that to me for some reason appears to be almost fascist.
There is nowhere apart from the lawn among the rental car park to grasp some fresh air and the atmosphere within the building is strangely sombre for what should normally be a bustling place. I found the LH lounge to be unbearable as it did not feature any windows at all - apart from being located at one strange end of the airport.
The Sky-Bar (named after the pay TV channel) on the upper level was trying hard to appear busy with TV shows running all over the place and offered food and drinks at ridiculous prices. The rest of the restaurants appeared to be of fast food character, none of them (apart from the Sky Bar) seemed to feature any kind of view.
Overall, I cannot help but pity you and wish you the best of luck surviving those 4 hours, which mught well turn out to be the most dreadful you are going to encounter in an otherwise great country.

hsv is not exaggerating -- although I think he is being somewhat unfair to fascist architecture, which tends to have more style than Malpensa.

Perhaps it is because Malpensa means "bad thoughts".

You can always hope your plane will be late!

Bring a good book, Ipod, etc.

Sorry, I don't have any better suggestions. By all means stay away from Milano Centrale railroad station as well if you don't want to be delighted with fascist architecture- that trumps MPX.

Rick

What?! What part of Centrale looks worse than MXP?

I'm with Mlle. Fifi. Milano Centrale is quite a nice piece of architecture, fascist though it may be.

milano centrale

http://www.grandistazioni.it/cms-fil..._p_533x350.jpg

malpensa

http://www.sea-aeroportimilano.it/en...nsa292x323.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...t_terminal.jpg

or

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i1...lano_001_n.jpg

I was referring more to this wrt Milano Centrale:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filetazione_centrale.jpg

This will put the fear of il Duce in you. Very impressive really.

Rick