Europe 2001: Milan

I awoke at around 5 am to the sight of the gorgeous Italian countryside.  Rolling hills and brightly painted houses were sprawled across the expanse outside the compartment window.  When the train pulled into the station, Amber and I happily leapt off and headed for our hotel.  I sort of half-guessingly found our way through the metros and asked a police officer how to find a road on our map, then we were at our hotel, which was fairly pleasant.  It had a nice big bed, a shower with really great water pressure, and even a side lounge with a couch and chair.  We had a balcony that overlooked a  large garden.  The receptionist was very charming, and even though we were three hours ahead of check-in, our room was ready.  We went straight up and took showers, called our families, changed clothes, and went to the Duomo.

The Duomo is so far the most ornate cathedral of all the others we had seen (but the Notre Dame is still very special).  There were hundreds of spires, tiled floors, and marvelous stained glass windows.  We bought tickets to climb up to the roof and wandered around the spires and statues, taking pictures.  It began to rain, but we didn't care.  When we were on the ground again, we saw some really funny children chasing and screaming at pigeons.  As we were leaving the Duomo grounds, as street person shoved a piece of colored string into my hands.  "Peace and love," he muttered.  "Give it back!  Give it back!"  Amber pushed me in the direction of the street person.  I turned around to do so, but the man was already wandering away, passing out his brightly colored strings to others.  

We wandered into an interesting square that was covered by a curved glass roof and ate some lunch, which was extremely good.  As we finished our gelato, the sun came out.  Next on our itinerary was a museum called the Museo Poldi-Pezzoli.  I couldn't even remember why we had wanted to go there in the first place.  As it turned out, we went to the strangest museum I've ever been in: Old lace, books, religious paintings, Spanish armor, old compasses, French tea cups, old sundials, ancient Roman artifacts, and old furniture.  Next, we took a long walk to the Santa Maria Della Grazie church, where da Vinci’s Last Supper is.  We didn't see the painting, as we needed reservations, but the courtyard in the church was very peaceful.  We sat in the shade on the warm stones and looked at the fountain with goldfish and gurgling frog waterspouts.  It was the first bit of real relaxation we had experienced on the whole trip.  

 Next, we wandered back towards the Duomo and into the glass-enclosed mall and went into a music and video store.  Amber bought a cd and I did too.  I was glad to have some new music to listen to.  Then, we went back to our hotel and had hot showers.  As we chatted about things and wrote in our journals, we listened to our music on my cd player.  Then we realized that we would have to wake up at 4:30 am to catch tomorrow’s train to Venice and went to bed soon after.

The view from our balcony