10-Jun-2018:: Exploring Milan
Frances arrived yesterday afternoon, and by the time I landed in Milan from Santiago and caught up with her (I arrived at a different terminal to hers and Malpensa is a big airport), it was late afternoon. By the time we reached our hotel in Milan (hotel Berna), it was close to dinner time. We were both pretty tired, so we had a quick local dinner and called it a day. It was a bit disappointing because we had originally planned to do some city surfing when we got in but Frances flights were delayed by enough time to make that untenable.
Today we arose early, as we had to rearrange our luggage, get some breakfast, find our way to La Piazza de Santa Maria Delle Grazie, which was somewhere in Milan, for the start of an organised city tour. After figuring out how to use the subway and asking a couple of people for directions, we arrived at the designated spot with some time to spare.
Our tour guide, Simone, was going to walk us through some of the iconic attractions of Milan. First up was Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper. It was in a small local Benedictine Monastery, in what used to be the monk’s mess hall. Of course, now it is a tightly controlled and monitored air conditioned room. Simone took us through the intricacies of the painting, which, because of the scope and scale of the work took some time. There were some bizarre facts and events relative to this work – a couple of hundred years ago, due to refurbishment of the monk’s kitchen next door, they enlarged a doorway which resulted in Jesus’ feet being cut off; also during the Napoleonic reign, the room which houses the painting was used as a stable
Next Simone showed us the beautiful monastery cloister. We walked through the upper class area of Milan where all the well to do people lived.
Just close by was the Sforzesco Castle, a magnificent, well preserved castle which was built in the 15th century and was inhabited by various dukes and Milanese rulers. It now houses several museums and art collections. There are so many pieces of art in these places that it would be impossible to quantify and categorise, it is almost beyond comprehension.
We walked past the statue of Garibaldi, responsible for the unification of Italy, into a street famous for its old world stores, onto the oldest part of Milan, an area which used to house the court house, the town hall and other important civic buildings. Finally we came to the Piazza Del Duomo, which is Milan’s magnificent cathedral, built almost exclusively in white marble. It was a very impressive structure with more than 100 individual spires. Unfortunately, being Sunday Mass time, no visitors were allowed in, So we were disappointed not to be able to check it out inside. Simone told us that it is the 4th largest Cathedral in the world, which was a surprise to me, as I have seen the Cathedrals in Burgos, Leon and Santiago De Compostela and thought they’d be in the same league. The tour then took us through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele ii a beautiful covered shopping mall which comprises many exclusive shops and restaurants; the Galleria was named after Italy’s First king; this area is the home of famous brands like Prada, Georgio Armani, Dolce and Gabbana, etc, all very exclusive and expensive stores. Our final stop was the La Scala theatre, probably the most famous opera theatre in the world. It didn’t look very impressive from the outside, but the tour did not take us inside either, so I can’t say too much about it
After lunch, we wandered about the shopping areas even made a purchase or two.
We had planned to visit nearby Bergamo, so once again we hopped onto a train which after 50 minutes or so took us there, and the a funicular, to take us up to the old city – la Alta Citta.
It was a fascinating medieval area jam packed with buildings, churches, museums and of course the customary cafes, restaurants souvenir shops etc. It was a pity we only had a couple of hours to explore, because it looked like a place that was worth further exploration.
We reached our hotel close to 7:40, both pretty tired, so a quick dinner was in order and then some