Milan: Goodbye Rose, Hello Italy.

March 30th
We left Interlaken in the morning and took a train to Speiz then to Milan. From Milan Rose went to Rome and then to Greece where she would be doing a work-away program with a friend from Oxford. Kelly and I stayed in Milan for the day. We were about halfway through our trip and ready for warm weather. We stored our luggage at the train station and made reservation for some of the more popular trains we needed to take in Italy . The train station in Milan was way busier than the one in Prague had been and we had to wait in line for some time to make reservations. Then finally we were set loose in Milan for several hours. And no, we did not shop. I thought about at least window shopping but we had so little time that we decided to skip fashion in favor of churchs. Our first, and main, stop was the Duomo. It seems like every Italian city has a Duomo which is basically the main cathedral. On our way there we stopped to ask directions from a friendly gay guy who was helpful but then tried to convince us that we should get him to read our palms or auras or something. After extracting ourselves from the conversation, we quickly found the Duomo. All the Duomos we saw were pretty impressive and Milan's Duomo is stunning. The Duomo took nearly 6 centuries to complete in its current form. It's triangular and pointy and kind of ridiculous and completely awesome. The whole thing has 135 spires and is one of the largest cathedrals in the world. The piazza around the Duomo as filled with pigeons and people trying to take pictures with them. There were even guys selling birdseed so you could take pictures with the pigeons. I saw this all over Italy. Pictures with pigeons are apparently popular although I don't really understand why you would want them to sit on you.

across form the Duomo


Duomo


There was really pretty stained glass inside which is really difficult to take good sneaky picture of

I just really like these doors on the Duomo
Piazza in front of the Duomo

After the Duomo, we walked by the Teatro alla Scala, opened in 1778. There's a museum connected to it but unfortunately we didn't get to go in since we didn't have much time and still waned to see some more of the city.
Next we headed off to the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, which contains Da Vinci's The Last Supper. You have to make a reservation for this way in advance and we couldn't quite figure out how to do this when we were planning the trip. We hoped we could still see some of the church though and so headed over there. We couldn't get in at all but the outside of the 15th century convent is rather pretty.

I like this back bit

Next, we defaulted to wander around mode. We were pretty lucky in our wanderings because we ran into Castello Sforzesco which was originally the palace of the Visconti family and then embellished by Francesco Sforzesco who became lord of Milan in 1450. So, we wandered around the courtyards and outside of this Renaissance palace.
Finally, we had to head back to the station to catch our afternoon train to Venice where we arrived just in time for a three-course dinner and a train strike. But more about that later.