Playtime in Milan!

Our first full day in Milan, we toured the Duomo, the Galleria, La Scala and viewed Leonardo's great fresco. A short stroll from Santa Maria delle Grazie, we found ourselves ready for lunch in the city.



On one of the streets we found a casual restaurant bedecked in pastels, bearing the somewhat improbable name "Playtime." When the restaurant owner saw Arianna, he beamed and directed his staff to serve us with deep-fried zucchini blossoms.





We had a very polite Chinese waiter. It was a little dissonant to be conversing with a person of my own race in Italian, in which neither of us was fluent. Yet it was the only language we had in common. The waiter spoke no English, and his Chinese dialect was not familiar to me at all. Still, we understood each other very well in Italian, and I was extremely pleased with my prawn and aritchoke risotto.

Aesthetically, though, my risotto could not measure up to the insalata di polpi, octopus salad. Blaine took this picture of his lunch:



Sidebar: If you want to really get to know octopus, I suggest you read about Miss Sueann Ramella's octo-orgy in South Korea.

Isn't that pink tablecloth gorgeous?

One other note on the Chinese in Italy: Sandi and Blaine made it to a Chinese restaurant in Genoa, where they were served breadsticks - and a sweet-and-sour dipping sauce. (When in Rome....) They ordered moo goo gai pin, but the restaurant staff couldn't decipher that! When speaking Chinese, it's all in the four tones - five tones in some dialects.

It’s about a hundred miles from Milan to Genoa

Originally posted 5/22

Along the way we passed one picturesque little town after another. They all seemed to have laundry hanging out the dry and small but healthy rooftop gardens.

Along the way, we crossed the river Po and agricultural country. Lots of rice, wheat, some corn – and for some reason unknown to me, lots of stunningly vivid red poppies growing in patches amidst the crops.



We also saw tiny little strips of grape vines scattered here and there – most likely raising just a small supply of grapes for the farmer’s personal winemaking.

As Genoa came within view, Arianna pointed out a old church on the hill above the sea. She said sailors used to go there to pray for safety on their long and often dangerous voyages. Their wives would also go there to pray for the men's safety. Our bus driver piped up that one could be sure some wives prayed fervently for their husbands NOT to return! No doubt.

Up on the Roof.

Sunday morning I went with two members of the group up to the Duomo rooftop to get up close and personal with the saints. I especially like those who sinned incomparably before turning it all around, thereby earning the right to be on the Duomo.

I took the paid elevator up, but you still have to walk the last bit up to the top. Here are a couple of shots from that excursion.



Cherri and Liz by one of the arches. You can see from the carved marble above them why the Duomo looks so lacy from the street.



Wish I knew enough about mythology and/or saints to know this guy's story....if you know why he's being held up (or pulled apart) by the cherubs, please post a comment to let me know!


You can walk across those massive roof tiles and get right up to the stained glass windows. Mass was in session when this shot was taken. I could hear the choir very clearly and smell incense too!



Now, THAT's a downspout, eh? Just one of the many gargoyles on the Duomo. One of them closely resembles a duck-billed platypus. No wonder Mark Twain said the statues including "every creeping thing!' (how King James....)


Imagine living with a Gothic cathedral right up against your home! See how close the saints and spires are to this block of apartments (possibly offices?), with rooftop gardens?

L'ultima Cena

Da Vinci's much-loved work "The Last Supper" is housed in Santa Maria delle Grazie. From its title, the Milanese concocted the word "Cenacolo" (chay-NAH-koh-loh) to name the building housing this incredible fresco.



No matter how trite you may think the image is, what with it hanging in millions of Catholic homes and the subject of countless parodies, the experience of actually standing before the fresco is captivating. I found myself unable to look away for even a second of the allotted fifteen minutes allowed each group of visitors. There is so much animation and expression that I never saw in prints of the image. And of course, what we were seeing was the fresco after an amazing restoration project that took over twenty years to complete, from 1978 to 1999. (And yes, the figure of John is so feminine, it's hard to buy the argument that it's the depiction of an 18-year old boy. At least, not any 18-year old boy I've seen on the WSU campus, ever!)

ADDED ON 5/21: The above picture is a stock photo of the fresco. Pictures are not allowed at the Cenacolo!!

Here are two good background articles on Il Cenacolo.

The first is from hellomilano.com. The other is from Wikipedia.

By the way, all over town there are posters advertising "The Da Vinci Code." From what I gather, there's a Leonardo exhibit taking place at the Castello Sforzesco. I'm guessing it was timed to coincide with the release of the film.

Finally, the Duomo!

Our delightful Milanese tour guide Arianna took us on a a ride on the subway and taught us about the city’s public transport system, as we will be on our own this afternoon and tomorrow. We then headed to the Piazza del Duomo to begin our city tour. We were disappointed that the façade of the world’s fourth largest (and possibly most ornate) cathedral was covered up for cleaning:



But there was an upside. We arrived while the Archbishop of Milan was saying Mass, with the choir and pipe organ in attendance. The interior of the Duomo is dark but even more ornate than the outside; with the choir’s voices resonating in that cavernous marble space it was spine-chilling. (Interior pictures not allowed, sorry.)

(BTW - I'll have some pics of Duomo details coming in a later post.)

Suffice it to say, Milan has been multicultural from the get go, having been ruled by the French, the Spanish and the Austrians, in the form of one powerful Duke or Prince after another. Finally, Milan was united with the rest of Italy under the reign of Vittorio Emannuele, who commissioned the building of a shopping mall—and what a mall it is!



I think it was Michael Palin who called Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele the Mother of All Shopping Malls.

The Galleria was a real favorite of Ernest Hemingway. Its arcades are domed and vaulted, its various arcades are elaborately tiled. You can't help but gasp at the enormous arched roof of iron and glass. (Tragic backstory: Just one day before the Galleria was inaugurated, the architect who designed the structure slipped from the scaffolding as he was inspecting the dome. He fell to his death.)

The upper levels have very detailed balconies, and what seem to be murals are actually mosaics. We were told the Milanese humidity (I can vouch that it certainly is humid!) would damage paintings, so the pieces were replaced with mosaic.



You know what's awfully incongruous in the Galleria? Right across from the Louis Vuitton and Prada boutiques, just to the right of this picture above, is – McDonalds! (I couldn't bring myself to photograph that, so use your mind's eye here, if you can stomach it.)

More pictures of the Galleria can be found at this site.