Milan in a day - June 17-18

Much like the title says, I saw pretty much all I wanted and was able to see of Milan in just one day. Significantly less then a full day actually, but what I saw was pretty damn cool.

Being Saturday, my coworkers and I all decided to sleep in a little bit. I hadn’t really planned on having company while I toured, but I’m a flexible kind of guy, and they were willing to go places I suggested, so we got along just fine. The first stop was the Metro station to get a ticket for the subway, underground, metro, whatever it’s called here. There was a little confusion there. First we wanted to buy tickets at the electronic kiosk, but we couldn’t make it speak English. Then there was confusion caused by the person selling the tickets who said that you could only get an all-day pass at the next station up the line. Then he reversed himself when I asked for a ticket to that station. Finally, we got tickets, and proceeded to the next challenge: figuring out which train we needed to take to get down to il Duomo station, which is conveniently located in the plaza right in front of one of Milan’s two most visited tourist sites.

Il Duomo is a fairly large cathedral, and it’s very intricate. There are lots of little carvings on the towers, of which there are over 100 I believe. I think that’s what I read. We walked through the inside. It wasn’t as crowded with monuments and other bric-a-brac as St. Edwards in London or the York Minster, but there was a significant portion of unused space. For such a large building it was actually a pretty small church. The inside was dark, and even after I’d finally figured out why my camera was taking such bad pics and changing the settings a little bit, none of them came out all that great. The flash just didn’t light things up very well. We walked around the inside for about half and hour or 45 minutes being nasty tourists and taking pictures, which I’m sure disturbed the worshippers. If I were one of them I’d be annoyed that these people were trampling through my holy place and taking pictures. I think everybody was being respectful, but you know there’s going to be someone who’s not.

After walking around the inside, we did a quick walk around the outside to take some more shots and then coughed up our four euros each to climb the steps to the roof. It’s free to get in, but you have to pay 4-6 to climb on top of it. In retrospect, it might have been worth it to pay the extra two euros to take the elevator. The steps went on so long that I kind of wondered if I’d died and this was my punishment. Once up top it was all worth it. I have some pictures, which I may put up at some point, but probably won’t. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll send you some. The top of the Duomo was pretty cool. You get to see the tower carvings closer up, but that’s not really the coolest thing about it. It’s just the way it looks, like it’s out of some sort of fairy tale or something. It all looked very delicate and very cool. We stayed up there for an hour or so just looking around and taking pictures. Rather than climb down we decided to be dishonest and take the elevator. Really though, it makes sense. Make everyone pay to climb – that way they get their exercise – and let everyone take the elevator down. This will prevent some of the backups on the stairs that we had to endure on the way up.

After we got down it was time for a nice bottle of water and some food. So we wandered around a bit looking for a bite and finally settled in this nice little outdoor café where no one spoke a word of English. We had a nice leisurely lunch and I said something about seeing the Parlour of Milan, which everyone sort of agreed to. Truth to tell it was right over by our subway stop, which I knew full well. There’s a fountain area outside the parlour with lots and lots of pigeons. I started walking away from the parlour toward the fountain t get a good look, and picture, of the building. So while I’m there these two guys grab my hand and put birdseed in them. Now I’m covered in pigeons. I had two thoughts going through my head. Thought 1: bird flu. Thought 2: Please don’t let these filthy beasts crap on me. Then these guys start hassling me for money. Apparently the little bit of birdseed and corn pieces they put in my hand warranted 5 euros each. That’s what they thought at least. I didn’t want to argue that much, but I’m not paying that much for the honor of having a bird on my hand. Certainly not when their cost of sales on that one couldn’t amount to more than a couple of cents each. I gave them each two and walked away. Actually, I gave one guy four and let the other guy hassle him about it. That way I only ended up paying $5 to make them go away and guy two was so busy hassling guy one for his share of the take that he let me go without saying anything. I am smart. S-M-R-T.

We stopped at a souvenir stand and I saw a paperweight of the Castello Sforenzo, which was tentatively on my list of things to see. I made a quick suggestion, figured out which stop we needed to get off at and we headed on our way. The castle wasn’t terribly impressive, but I’m glad I went. I like castles almost as much as I like cathedrals. We skipped all the castle museums and just walked around the place a little bit.

After that it was time to try to find the grand-daddy of all interesting things in Milan and probably the hardest to get in to see. It was also the one item on my list that I was least likely to get to see: Leonardo DaVinci’s “Last Supper”. The train stop was only the next one up the line, so we decided to hoof it. We walked, and walked, and walked, and walked. We had a map, but not knowing the lay of the land and me not being a boy scount, it was hard to tell which way was east, west, north, or south. So we’d compare the map to street names to see if we were going in the right direction, which seems logical. I only saw one street name on both the map and the street the entire time until we finally gave up and asked a couple of passing ladies where the Ultima Cena was. Of course I’d led us in the wrong direction. If I say “trust me” about a direction, do yourself a favor and go the opposite way. Well, we found the church where the last supper is, but we didn’t actually get in to see it. There were no tickets available until the end of July. I knew I was going to be here well in advance. I wonder why I didn’t book a spot when I had the chance.

Slightly disappointed, we made our way by foot and train back to the hotel. Sunday was a day of rest. We all stuck to ourselves except for dinner. I pretty much stayed in my room the whole day and read. I’d like to say I did something useful, like CPA studying or something like that, but no, I read. It was a good book, too. I’m pretty glad I did it.

So next weekend I’m considering going to Florence. It’s only a 2-3.5 hour train ride. Tickets appear to cost 28 euros in both directions. I can leave to go at 9am and come back on the 9pm train, which would get me back to the hotel around midnight. I don’t have a whole lot longer to think about it. I’ll probably need to book my reservation no later than Wednesday. At this point though, it’s looking pretty good.