Italy: Milan

I was lucky enough to have a few travel companions with me this trip.  My Mom heard we were planning a trip to Italy and put a bug in my Dad's ear.  He surprised her with tickets for her birthday.  This made it so nice when Eric had to work, I didn't have to sight-see all by myself.  The tiny flat they rented in Milan was just around the corner from our hotel.

We spent two days in Milan.  We loved the walking tours we had taken in Barcelona last year so much we decided to start each new Italy location with one.  You get a little local history and a guide that will answer your travel questions to plan the rest of your trip.  They give you the current happenings around town, some pointers for seeing the most popular attractions, and taking their tour gives you an opportunity to meet other tourists and make some new friends.  In Milan we took the free walking tour.  (www.newmilanfreetour.it)

Here are some of the sights we saw:

Of course we had to go to the Milan Cathedral, also known as the Duomo.  It is the fourth-largest church in Europe.  Unlike the other cathedrals in Italy this cathedral stayed true to the Gothic architecture with which it was started and forfeited the popular renaissance dome as architectural trends shifted.  A very different style to all the other cathedrals we saw on our trip.

My favorite part of this cathedral was the statue of St. Bartolomeo.  It looked like it belonged at our house on Halloween.  This was a gory depiction of  Bartolomeo carrying his skin like a robe after being skinned by the Romans.  When you walked around the statue you could see his face, hands and feet.  It was quite sensational.

The Vittorio Galleria was an elaborate shopping area. The art tiled into the walls and the floor was representational of the establishment of Italy and around the center dome there were mosaics paying tribute to the four major continents.  On the floor was a little about Itlay's history including the she-wolf with Romulus and Remus and another of a torino (honoring the city Torino) that passersby make sure to step and spin on for a little good luck.

We passed by the world's most prestigious opera house, Teatrale alla Scala...

...and stood before Leonardo da Vinci himself.

We ventured to the Brera Neighborhood and visited with some local artists while we admired their work. We had some yummy Italian gelato.  (I think I liked the gelato in Spain better, but it was probably because it was so stinkin' hot when we were there.  That was not this case this trip.)

It was also in the Brera Neighborhood that we met Pinocchio (up to his old tricks, it seemed by the length of his nose)  and visited Geppetto's shop.

A few months before our trip I booked us tickets to get into the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie and see Leonardo's fresco of "The Last Supper."  Due to the deterioration of this piece of art they limit the number of people who can view it to help with the preservation.

This was probably the highlight of my Milan experience.  I have studied this piece of art and taught about it countless times, da Vinci's mathematical precision to create depth and perspective, his scientific representation of the human body, but seeing it in person was more than I could have imagined.  When I walked up to this wall it was as if I had stepped back in time and had an invitation to join the Savior and his apostles at the table.  I was right there with them!  That was when I determined that great art to me was a piece (visual, musical, literary or otherwise) that could transport me to another time and place and help me experience thoughts and feelings that I never could on my own.  I also determined (between this trip and my Barcelona trip) that the only true way to really appreciate and understand a piece of art and the artist is to see it first hand in the setting the artist intended. I was sad Eric wasn't able to experience it with me.

Eric was probably more disappointed he didn't get to visit the Sforza Castle.  Housed within this castle are several different museums.  There was an ancient art exhibit, a midieval armory,

tapestries, the progression of furniture and interior design through the ages, paintings, and sculputres including Michelangelo's unfinished Pieta.  

There was also a museum of musical instruments in one wing that caught my attention.

While we were in Milan we hit the tail end of Fashion Week before it moved to Paris.  In many of the piazzas there were big screens and seating set up so you could sit and watch what was happening on the runway.  We also took a stroll down the via Dante, a pedestrian only boulevard, and did some window shopping in Milan's high end shopping district.  It was fun to see the up-and-coming fashions.

After squeezing all that in to two days, it was a good thing we had a few hours to rest on the train to Venice. This was only the beginning!