First up was Milan!
To start with Michelle basically had me convinced Milan was a one stop shop with a couple of stores, the Duomo, and a little bit of gelato. Pretty true to her word, Milan was no Rome. It didn’t have grand architecture or the history that I’ve been so privileged to be around in other parts of Italy, but boy if we didn’t have a good time people watching!
Eryn and I landed in the station (after riding in 1st class. Nbd.) and made our way to the Duomo stop after a hundred-and-one tries of buying a train ticket. We walked up the metro stairs into the piazza in front of the Duomo, otherwise known as the pigeon sanctuary.
People. Ragazzi. I sit on the floors of highly questionable places, I eat after others, I don’t consistently wash my hands, and I had bugs crawling on my scabs while I was in Haiti. By no means am I a neat freak but WHAT IN THE HELL IS WITH THIS PIGEON CULTURE?
Pigeons are rats with wings, and that is putting it politely. They carry so many diseases and they don’t even have sparkly colors! Which is why it made my head hurt to think about the fact that all around us people were standing, arms out, palms up, with 15 pigeons making a home on their flesh. I. Was. Thoroughly. Grossed. Out.
We must have sat there for a good 30 minutes just trying to understand why people from all across the world thought it was a good idea to dress themselves in pigeon for the afternoon. Yuck.
After that cute little display of public sanitation Eryn and I finally headed into the Duomo. Holy gothic.
I am pretty sure I’m starting to sound a little repetitive on this here blog of mine, but I was floored. The Duomo in Milan was unlike anything I’d ever seen in my other travels, mostly attributed to the fact that it was Medieval architecture.
It was just so big. I loved the scale of it and compared to the Duomo I saw in Florence it felt full. The Duomo in Florence was barren, to symbolize modest living and lack of material goods, but the Duomo in Milan had these giant pillars and the walls were dark along with the lighting, somehow managing to create a sense of intimacy despite the huge floor plan. Another favorite element of mine was the stain glass. Again, it’s not a super huge thing in Rome so I don’t see too much of it. This one had these massive windows with over 150 individual panes that each depicted a different scene (we counted). The detail in the glass was breathtaking and it brought in some natural light to an otherwise dark environment!
After our trip to the Duomo we went back out and sat on the steps for a little while because we could not get enough of all the people watching. My personal favorite was watching a couple who had just gotten married take their wedding pictures in front of the Duomo.. mid-picture the groom gets a call and just starts casually talking on his phone while his new wife just kind of stood there and continued to pose. Huh?
We also watched as no less than 4 people fell down the Duomo steps.. so the afternoon was pretty interesting without having even gone anywhere!
After we got bored of guessing the Americans (The telltale sign is plaid and chacos) we got up and headed to a park looking thing about a mile away.
Shoot darn this place was huge. It was a castle thing with about a million different museums in it. Slight exaggeration but seriously. For 3 euro, I was about it.
We wandered around and looked through an old furniture collection, religious paintings (hello, Italy), and several other forms of art. It was pretty nifty because Eryn is Jewish and I’m a Catholic so as we were going through the museums we had a pretty healthy dose of conversation about how religious pieces of art connect with what our own faiths subscribe to. Light travel conversation!
Afterward I was pretty exhausted so I begged Eryn to give me 25 minutes to take a nap on a bench in the park.
*Insert personal commentary:
I’m starting to give you a play by play of my travels, which nobody wants, so I’ll just condense the rest of this afternoon:
- We went to a park where we had a nice conversation about career choices and witnessed the most segregated park I have ever been in, with darker skinned Italians on one side and the whiter Italians on the opposing side of the river. Hooray for 21st century segregation, amiright?
- Window shopped until I felt sad that I wasn’t wealthy enough to buy a giant fur coat in the middle of August. Not that I would want to wear it. I just want to be able to walk in my home and pet my coat and say I have a giant fur coat.
- Went to a great place called Luini that made the most heavenly calzones I’ve ever tasted. (Lookin’ at you, Alison)
Afterward we ordered and ate way too much food for dinner and headed on our train to Como. (Please see my Switzerland post to see how the rest of that night turned out.)
Running in Rome 