This is the third time I have written this post... extremely frustrated with Blogger, and will now be composing in Notes and copying over to Blogger for publishing purposes. Argh.
We managed to accomplish everything on our Milan checklist today despite a later-than-planned start. We began with breakfast at the hotel, which was fine, but uninspired. Have I complained that when one orders hot chocolate at a hotel that caters to Americans, one gets watery, tasteless stuff obviously from a mix and not the awesome stuff Italians call cioccolatta calda? Well one does. Lame.
After breakfast, we walked back over to the Castello Sforzesco and went to the Pieta Museum there. A pieta is a sculpture of Mary holding the crucified body of Christ. It's apparently a recurring theme in religious art. The one in Milan is a Michelangelo, the last sculpture he worked on, actively sculpting until just days before he died. He had created another pieta early in his career, when he was just in his twenties, and apparently, the two sculptures are vastly different, informed by Michelangelo's lifetime of experience. We'd planned to just pop in and out with a quick look at the sculpture, but it really is captivating, and we were there about an hour.
From the Pieta, we went back to the Duomo, planning to get the daily tour given by the Duomo staff. We stood in line, got tickets, were confused about the starting place for the tour, went inside the church, still couldn't find a tour, watched them celebrate Mass for a few minutes, got asphyxiated by incense, tried to rent audio tours from a booth that had been abandoned, found a brochure with more information about the tour, hustled back out of the church, still couldn't find the tour, finally saw someone with an "ASK ME" button and asked her, got grabbed by the elbows and hustled to the right window, bought the right tickets, and were handed over to our guide to get headsets just in time for the tour. Whew. I'm really glad we did have the guide, because the church is so big and has so much going on. They have a nail (allegedly) from the crucifixion, which is kept in a special box way up in the ceiling, and only brought down once a year for adoration. There is a small window in the roof that, at mid day, casts a sunbeam exactly on a tile in the floor corresponding to the astrological sign for that month. Lyle said that it reminded him of Indiana Jones. There are lots of sculptures of religious figures and historical figures relevant to the church, but by far my favorite was a sculpture of a flayed St. Bartholomew wearing his skin draped over him.
Above the central doors to the duomo are two statues said to have influenced the sculptor of one very famous lady in NYC. I can't say for certain whether that's true, but both of our guides pointed it out, so clearly the Milanese believe it.
When we were done at the Duomo, we found our way to the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, which has da Vinci's "The Musician" as well as the "Codex Atlanticus", now unbound and framed in glass so it can be seen and preserved. There's also a lot of other art by important people, including at least one piece by Botticelli (dead male "B"), but it was mostly wasted on me. The museum curators, not being morons, set up their exhibits such that you have to walk through ALL THE REST of the art to get to the Leonardo stuff. I don't blame them, but it made that museum trip take longer than planned as well. The Leonardo was worth it though, no question.
We had some time after all that and before our next scheduled tour, so we stopped at a cafe for more pasta and a proper Italian hot chocolate. (Lyle had beer.) This was the first time either of us had ordered lasagna on this trip, and it looked surprisingly like what's routinely served in the Sinclair household, even a bit soupy, and not much like what's served in high end Italian restaurants in the States. Here's Lyle doing his best Ed O'Neil impression.
After lunch we joined about ten fellow opera lovers (haha) for a tour of the La Scala Theater. Confession time: I only signed us up for this tour because I think the theater was the inspiration for the Senate scenes in Star Wars. We did get to go into a box and look down on the theater, and it was pretty awesome, but the whole rest of the tour was opera, opera, opera and both Lyle and I effectively slept through it, standing up. Lyle did appreciate some of the antique instruments, and says he learned the difference between a spinet and a piano. Blah, blah, blah Verdi. Blah, blah, blah Puccini. They didn't let us take photos, but it really was spectacular.
I wanted to see this Trompe l'oil I'd read about, so after the opera tour, despite the fact that we were both in need of a caffeine boost, we headed over to Santa Maria presso San Satiro - which is a little church tucked into a street filled with shops and crowds. Standing in the back of the church, it appears that the choir is at least 20 feet deep, but when you get closer, you can see it's really only about 18 inches. Trompe l'oil means something like "fool the eye" and it's all about manipulating perspective. It was a very short visit, but worth the few minutes to check it out.
The last thing on our check list was Leonardo's canals, called the Navigli waterways, and so we walked down there. Compared to the waterways of Venice, it was hard to be impressed, and it was crazy crowded, but it was still cool to see another side of the Leonardo genius.
When we'd had enough of that, it was way past gelato time. I got rose flavored gelato, which actually tasted like roses (but in a good way) and Lyle went with the more traditional dark chocolate and strawberry. No complaints about gelato.
Then it was back to the hotel to pick up our bags. The bellhop specifically warned us to keep our eyes open at the train station because "they will know you are tourists", which I interpreted to mean "you stick out like the dumb Americans you are".
Stay tuned to this channel to find out what happened at the train station!
Marty and Lyle
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