Milan

We are finally home, so I will be writing and back-dating the blog again. I have also changed the setting on the comments section so they should show up immediately when they are written.

S checks out the flying buttresses

We woke up very early on Saturday morning and caught a very crowded train to Milan. We passed through a snowstorm! We knew that hiking season ends on October 20, and it has seemed like fall here with the leaves changing and roasted chestnuts being sold on the street corners, but we were a little surprised to see snow several inches deep. It was enough of a storm that we saw a car being towed.

When we arrived in Milan we decided to walk to the Duomo (cathedral) and passed through a very pretty public garden. At the Duomo the first thing we did was take the elevator up to the terraces for a view. The other option would be to take the stairs to the roof. Luckily, I found a hole in a wall that lead to the stairs and the girls and I climbed up to the roof, too. E and the littles went back down since we had the stroller with us.

On the left is the view down from the terrace level.

On the right is the view down to the terrace from the roof.

About a third of the roof was closed off due to construction, but it was still impressive. It is slanted, not surprisingly, so it was slightly nerve wracking for me to make it to the edge to check out the view. I'm finding that my combination of no depth perception and vertigo ear make it hard to get around the narrow ledges, uneven steps, sloping roofs, etc that seem to be everywhere. S loved the roof, though, since she could be as tall as R.

We also went inside the Duomo, but decided not to pay the fee to be allowed to take pictures. It was pretty dark in there, so the chances of a good shot weren't very high. The interior was a little plain compared to the incredibly elaborate exterior, but it did have beautiful windows and an amazing marble floor. The thing that struck me most was the glass tomb of Cardinal Schuster. I don't remember ever noticing a glass tomb before, and I was pretty confused by it. I wasn't sure if it was a wax figure in a glass case over an actual tomb or whether there was really a body in there. If the latter, the body looked a bit shrunken under its robes, but decomposition seemed impossible in there. I figure now it was a body, but I am still pondering the logistics of the whole thing. Luckily, I was spared having to ponder the specifics, since his face was covered with a death mask. Unfortunately for him, it was a silver mask and made him look like the tin man.

Here is something else strange: on the side of the Duomo was a huge Times Square style video advertisement.

After the Duomo we went next door to the huge Galleria, which is a very old shopping mall. I think I read that the iron and glass roof is older than the Eiffel Tower. I am going to believe that because I am writing this on our first night back, and I am too tired to care about verifying. The roof and dome were very cool. I don't think the picture really shows the size of them.  There is another important attraction in the Galleria: a bull mosaic. It represents one of Milan's neighboring towns. There is a superstition that spinning on your heel on a particular spot on the bull will bring good luck. You can see in the picture where it is worn down.

After the Galleria we went for gelato at Grom, which was one of the top three gelatos on our trip. E said it was the best pistachio ice cream he has ever had. Then we had some down time. It was too late to go to the Sforza castle and too early for anywhere to be open for dinner, so we ended up shopping for warm clothes since we were all freezing. The girls got scarves and T got a hat. S was pretty happy, since we had been talking about a woman on the train we was going to Milan just to do shopping, and now S was shopping for fashion in Milan, too.

Finally we had some dinner at a cafeteria restaurant and headed to the train station. There were no elevators on the subway, so we had to unpack the tired littles from their stroller and carry them and it down several flights of stairs. We were definitely missing Switzerland! And we were missing Switzerland again when, with only a few minutes until our train to Rome, the platform still had not been posted or announced. There were absolutely no train workers of any kind anywhere in the station. The announcement was finally made by a cop who took a phone call and then told a few people nearby the platform - in a normal speaking voice and in Italian. Then everyone ran as fast as they could downstairs to another part of the station and a far away platform. It's a wonder no one was hurt.

This was the best part of the wait for the train. There was a see-through escalator!