Milan

Dan and I left on Friday to head to Milan for 3 nights.  It was kind of a last minute decision, but it was nice to get away for the weekend.  It took us about 3 and a half hours to get there, once we reached the city, the traffic was crazy.  We had to travel in it for a while too since out hotel was in the center of the city.  The hotel we stayed in was pretty nice, it was called the Star Hotel Ritz, the hubby always does a great job with picking the hotels.  It was small, like most European hotels, but nice. 

The first morning we hopped on the metro and went to the Santa Maria Delle Grazie church, where the painting of The Last Supper is.  We booked our tickets online and just had to check in at 0800.  It was pretty amazing to learn about the history of the painting, the building collapsing during the war and then them rebuilding and restoring the painting.  It’s now also in a temperature/humidity controlled room so it won’t damage as easily.  This is the outside of the church it was in.

The picture below is actually the building it’s in, it’s connected to the church.

After we had our 15 minutes in the room to view the painting, we got back on the metro and headed to the Duomo.  Wowsa.

This is the 3rd largest Duomo in Europe and the 5th largest in the world.  Pretty amazing. 

After we looked around in the church for a bit, we headed to but tickets to go on top of the Duomo.  Picture below is on our way to the top.

On the very top of the Duomo

On our way back down.

After we were done at the Duomo we walked the the streets filled with shops. Right next to the Duomo is a covered shopping area that was pretty neat.

People place their foot on the testicles of the bull and spin for good luck. Apparently, it’s had to be replaced from all the people spinning on it. We didn’t spin, but saw many people doing it.

We also headed down a few blocks to another large shopping area…these people are serious about their shopping!  We saw a Rolex store and wanted to go in, just to see. I pulled on the door and it was locked, they had to buzz us in!  If I would have known that, I wouldn’t have wasted the time. They only had about 5 watches on display, there were 4 men that were working and all 4 had guns on them. They said, “If there’s more you want to look at, we have many more, they are all just well hidden.” When we saw a model that was a few years old that cost over 5 thousand Euro, we were good.  We walked around and went in some other stores as well, they at least had their doors unlocked, but still a high volume of security.  It’s amazing how much money that city has in it.  I’ve never seen so many nice cars in one city in my life. I don’t think I’d be spending that kind of money on a car to drive in that city and traffic, metro would work just fine for me.  It reminded me on NYC without the many, many skyscrapers. Lots of people, lots of shops, it was nice.  We then went to a museum that had many paintings and in the last room was a library that held some of Leonardi Di Vinci’s orignal sketches.  As this was amazing, it was also a little disappointing because they were just doodles of various things, nothing in particular.  Still pretty neat though. 

We headed back towards the center and towards the castle in town. Another view of the Duomo a little later in the afternoon.

Headed towards the castle

Family of Chickens (Carnivale was still going on in Milan)

Inside the walls of the castle there was a carnival going on, it had all kinds of rides for kids and lots of food stands.

That night, we went to dinner at a place Dan found online. It was Ethiopian food, in which no silverware was given.  It was pretty interesting and very yummy.  Glad we ate there. 

That sums up our first day in Milan. It truly is an amazing city!