Milano

day 2 – giorno due

The past couple days have gone so quickly. It reminds me that although we’re overwhelmed in the moment, we need to take things slow and enjoy the chaos. Lauren also reminded me of this 💜

Wednesday morning we finally rolled out of bed at almost 11:30 am…! I can’t remember the last time I slept in that late and I doubt Mom ever has in her adult life. We had both woken up around 3 am and it took a while for me to get my brain to shut up and get back to sleep, but thank goodness I did.

We made some caffe and ate the little breakfast food Cristina had left for us: figs and yogurt. Then with a little route planning (maps in hand of course) and low expectations, we set out to see part of the city.

We are staying in the scenic Navigli district, with canals and lots of restaurants and bars/cafes. By the time we left the apartment it was early afternoon and most of the restaurants were closed but lots of people were out walking, shopping, talking… everyone seemed to be talking to someone, mostly on the phone. The route we took to get to the Duomo Milano was partly pedestrian only which was a nice change from the rush of bikes, motorbikes, buses, trams, cars, and taxis constantly flowing through the streets. For how insane the traffic is, it’s astonishing how few bike riders were wearing helmets. Plus the bikers often rode through throngs of people in piazzas, weaving between sign posts and eco blocks as well. Talk about taking your life in your hands. Most of the crosswalks had lights but occasionally we just had to go for it when we had a chance. The Milanese did that much more often.

On top of Milano being “the NYC of Italy”, it was also Fashion Week so the city was extra inundated with tall beautiful women in extremely uncomfortable looking clothes. We passed store after store selling name brand shoes, clothes, glasses, perfume, clothes, shoes, rubber duckies?, pastries, gelato, clothes, and more clothes. I’m not a gal who likes shopping so we only glanced through windows now and then. At all of the sights we made a point to see, there were people getting set up for fashion shows, presumably taking place this weekend.

I digress. Oh! We got 🍕! Pesto of course and totally drool worthy.

Via Torino (the street we took to get to the center of town) led straight into Piazza del Duomo. Even from a distance, the Duomo is overpowering, and even more so up close. I believe it took approximately 5000 years for this massive church to be finished and now it’s in the middle of a huge scale face-lift. For today, we just walked around the Duomo and admired it from the outside. From there we wandered through Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a large shopping mall with a very high glass domed ceiling. Art is everywhere here, whether it’s in the organization of the cobbles on the street, the grafitti on the garage doors of shops, the sides of buildings long ignored, heavy iron door hardware, curled and curved gates and fences, not to mention the art collections in museums.

From the Galleria we headed for the Brera Gallery, or thought we did. Thanks to the miniature Duomo on the map I got confused with directions and we ended up going down a long pedestrian street lined with fancy clothing stores. We also happened upon a piazza with a fancy water feature which turned out to be the entrance to an Apple store! Or maybe it was an office but either way they really outdid themselves.

Once we got ourselves realigned we walked by the Teatro alla Scala and on to the Brera. The building used to be a monastery so the front entry opened up into a large courtyard, a larger than life sculpture of Napoleon holding Tinkerbell in the center on a floor of white gravel. The art collection in the museum was impressive for sure, but this sponge can only absorb so much. Mom kept sharing bits of knowledge which made things more interesting and we did find a few favorite paintings. I think the thing that most impressed me was the size of some of the paintings; they took up the whole wall of a very large room!

On our way out, there was a line of fashion models doing their practice runway strut around the courtyard. Too bad we didn’t get to witness a fashion show!

After soaking up as much art as we could, we headed for home. We went by so many gelato shops that finally we had to stop and experience true Italian gelato. I got mango and pastry cream… Yummmm. A quick stop at a nearby grocery got us dinner and breakfast; cheese, wine, apples, and yogurt. Home a little after 8 pm and time to do laundry, journaling, and have a glass of vino! Buonanotte!