Milano, an Italian Weekend

Finally we boarded our plane and set out for Milan. We arrived in Italy and worked our way to the hotel, passing the Sforza Castle and Arch of Peace. We decided to skip trying to get tickets to La Scala in exchange for a nap. Two operas in one week, we decided, would be a bit much. After our nap we struck out for the city. We walked through parco sempione and made our way to the Duomo for our first look at the soaring cathedral. We walked through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. It is named after the first king of unified Italy and is the precursor to the modern shopping mall. The Galleria is basically two corridors that intersect in the middle and are covered by a roof of arching glass and iron. Inside are a number of famous stores and restaurants. We passed through and on the other side was the world famous La Scala opera house. I must say that it is a rather unassuming building from the outside. The outside only serves to hide the lavishness that greeted us on the inside. The theatre was beautiful, even if the boxes didn’t exactly offer the best of views. We then proceeded to tour the theatre museum. After our tour we went to one of the restaurants in the Galleria and had our first Italian meal (P- Spaghetti Carbonara, S- Ravioli) followed by that Italian frozen nectar of the gods –Gelato. Then it was back to the hotel to rest.

We woke up on Saturday and got cappuccinos at a local café before heading into the Sforza Castle. The castle houses a number of museums and we saw most of them: Museum of Ancient Art, Museum of Antique Furniture, Museum of Applied Arts, Museum of Instruments. The coolest thing was at the end of the Ancient Art museum, the Rondanini Pieta. This is the last work of Michelangelo and remains unfinished. You can see on the sculpture where he had started to make changes to the design including an arm that no longer belongs to any of the figures. There were two more museums but we were hungry and set out for a delicious lunch of some authentic Italian pizza. We stopped in the Duomo for the end of an organ concert and to look around. While it was dark and cloudy outside it was much darker in the church. The outside stone is very bright but inside it is much greyer. This, combined with the dark stained glass, made for a somewhat somber feeling church.

Sunday was a bit rainy and so we slept in and then made our way down to the cathedral for mass. Afterwards we climbed to the top of the cathedral. This was extremely cool as you get to be up close to all the statuary and embellishments on the roof that are hard to appreciate from the ground. Possibly my favorite thing about the trip to the roof was the trip back down. While walking along the roof you have to pass through a number of archways. We were following a girl with a big blue umbrella. When she came to the first arch she tried to simply walk through with her umbrella open over her shoulder. It didn’t fit however and she got a little stuck, freed herself, and continued on. Then she did it again at the next doorway not 30 feet away. Then she did it AGAIN!!!!! I don’t know why she couldn’t learn that the arches were too narrow. I got a picture on the third time and so we missed her going through the fourth arch but we know by the fifth she had learned her lesson. We went to our last lunch in the Galleria and listened to the soccer fans chanting. It was a big game between AC Milan and Internazionale (both Milanese teams.) Lunch was a little slow and so as soon as it was over we started running to make sure we made our plane. Suffice it to say that it was a close call. A really close call. But we made it and that’s what counts. And what’s an adventure without a little panic. We returned to Elena’s and had a delicious homemade meal.

-Patrick