Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Milano, Italy
We have a good hotel here, its nice enough, but we have to move as it is full this evening. We used Booking.com to do the job, and found a four star hotel, good but expensive at E160 per night, same as the one last night.
After breakfast we towed our luggage out of the hotel and up the street, via Buenos Aires, two blocks to a baby store that we discovered on a walkabout last night. Jan bought some baby clothes, our first time doing this for 25 years, while I guarded the luggage on the street. She had a huge smile on her face the whole time, she was so happy. Then with this special little package added to our bags, up the street to our new hotel. We left the bags there as it was too early to get to our room, and then walked the couple of blocks up to the station to book our train ticket on the Eurostar from Paris to London on the afternoon of October 20. We couldn't find the Eurorail office, so we got the deed done at a nearby Deutchbahn office and it worked well. Then we celebrated it all by going to McDonalds for coffees and fries.
Then back to the hotel to move our gear to our room. A very short rest, then out onto the street bound for the Duomo. We bought Metro tickets, then down to the depths and onto the appropriate subway car, and four stops later we exited at the tube stop for the Duomo. This building, the latest in a long, long line of these buildings that we have seen, was an impressive sight. Huge, with high spires all over the roof, and according to the literature over 200 marble statues all over the sides, front, and back of the building. Inside, also impressive, huge and cavernous and imposing, with statues of saints and especially of popes. I look at all this, and I think of the very humble ruins in Ephesis and where this religious thing all began, and I am just feeling sick. All the death, all the repression, all the conspiracy, all the injustices, all in the name of glorifying the structure of the church. I'm not going into one of these buildings again.
We passed through the memorial to Vittorio Emanuel, near the Duomo, now turned into a shopping center. We wandered, bought some books in an english-language book store, then passed out the other side and past a statue of Leonardo Da Vinci and across the street. There we found 'La Scala' the famous opera house and performing arts venue. It was closed, we couldn't go in, but we took photos of the outside and some of the billboards that were up in the cases, advertising coming and past acts. Very impressive. Then moving on, in search of the via Dante which is a well known shopping and pedestrian street that connects the general area of the Duomo with the giant castle and gardens at the other end. This is, first and foremost, a shopping street in a shopping city, and absolutely lived up to its name and press reports. All Jan could say as we walked along was 'I wish the girls were here to go shopping with us'. We ended up at the huge fountain just in front of the medieval castle at the far end of the via Dante, certainly a major photo opportunity. Unfortunately my last, as my third of three camera batteries came up dead on me, but Jan continued to shoot memories. Then over the drawbridge and through the portals, under the huge raised iron gate with the spikes on the end, and into the inner courtyard. I read some of the explanatory material on the displays around the castle and it seems that everyone was conspiring against everyone else during the time of the castle's heyday. So an enormous square tower was erected in the inner courtyard, and the queen spent her time holed up in there fearing for her life, beset by enemies from within. Not good, but predictable I suppose in those days. Later we moved out the back, further from the entry, sort of out the back door of the castle into the garden area. The gardens were truly beautiful, lovely and deep, and in the failing light we could make out in the distance on the far side of the gardens a triumphal arch. But there wasn't time to explore further as they were about to close the castle and we didn't want to walk through the gardens down the sides to the streets.
Out front again, and hungry, we went to a nice looking restaurant across the street from the castle for a light dinner, pizza for me and pasta (fusili with pesto sauce) for Jan. Then a leisurely walk back to the Duomo and the Metro entrance, then a subway ride home to our hotel. There, tired but happy, off to bed. Tomorrow a big leg on the homeward journey, Milano to Paris.
