15/7 Milan Italy

Sunday 15^th

The hotel was very nice apart from the lack of a lift . . . but its only 2 flights up and we are relatively lightly loaded. The eccondishning didn’t seem to turn off and we woke in the middle of the night quietly freezing. And there is some strange piece of electrical apparatus under the Utube in the toilet that starts up and gurgles every now and then.  As usual, there is free wifi in the room.  It is a large room that has been very tastefully renovated.

It has the weirdest toilet I have ever seen.

It had been a LONG time between sleeps – we had less than 3 hours on Friday before getting up at 2.30 and we then had 27.5 hours with only catnaps on the plane. Hey but we are tough. Woke at 6am today (noon in Perth) and are about to drop in at the supermarket for muesli and yoghurt.

Yeah well that worked well. I ended up going up and down the stairs 4 times into the total darkness of the stair well before the hotel manager took me out the side exit through the 1^st floor terrace and showed me where to press the button to get onto the street. I had been groping round in the dark trying to find the (non-existent) button to open the steel door at the bottom of the stairwell.

So after all that I was pretty relieved to get into the supermarket. Well I would have been if it had been open. It doesn’t open on Sundays but the slack jawed local outside the nearby tavern told me where to find another one that will open at 9am. I have given the directions to J, whose turn it must surely be?

Just to complete the brekky saga . . . J got back from the supermarket and announced that there were breakfast trays on the counter. Yes . . . we get free brekky! Bugger. Very similar to what we got from Franco in Rome – long life croissants, biscuits, biscotti with jam and nutella (but no banana). Much of the above will accompany us on our ramble and make a free lunch. The best part – there is a coffee machine which does the full spectrum of coffees etc . . including cappuccino and cappuccino with chocolate. They are usually 60c per small cup but we sort of understood they are free for brekky. So we had 6 J This is a new establishment that only has 4 reviews in Hostelbookers – all 100% satisfaction rating.

I discovered that the Eagles are currently playing their critical game against Sydney and we have it going on 6PR on the laptop (how did we EVER manage to travel without it???). I was much happier when we were leading 20-0 than I felt when it was 27-48. But I fear that this particular avenue of pleasure is about to be closed to me as Her Indoors seems to be poised for the Daily Walk.

And walk we did . . . for about 6 hours. We started with a general amble through the shopping district. Milan is famous as a focal point of the international fashion industry and we were not surprised to see a lot of very well-turned out women and some very stylish outfits. Perhaps more so . . some very fashionable and even bizarre outfits on gay men. Some of them REALLY out there.

Breakfast at Tiffany's.  Not exactly Audrey Hepburn

Similarly, the architecture was very elegant and attractive. I found myself increasingly irritated in absentia with Perth’s insistence that our heritage buildings are important and should be preserved simply because they are “old” and Australian. These Milanese structures are old and Italian but the real reasons they are there is that they are beautiful and valuable and of solid construction. And they are Old in terms of centuries not decades and they depict classical design features rather than local and transient designs and perishable components like tin roofs. My considered advice to the heritage councils of WA is “get rid of it and start again”. We may as well preserve footage of John Howard playing cricket or Juliar speaking English. Yes genuinely authentic Australian but ugly, lacking talent or merit and utterly cringe-worthy.

This was round about the moment we turned a corner and there was the Duomo! I had no idea what it was but it was utterly overpowering for its size, its age and its overwhelming beauty. And freshly maintained. Even the part that was undergoing repairs was encased in a painted structure that showed it as it will be after work is completed. We walked around the outside and it was utterly beautiful from every angle. It is a Gothic cathedral, as is the Gaudi structure in Barcelona, but completely different.

Right behind was the huge statue of Victor Emmanuel II on horseback. VE was known and loved as the Father of the Nation who oversaw the reunification of Italy and its growth as a major colonial nation. His son VE III took Italy into 2 world wars and died in exile. You may recall that VE II was immortalised in the absolutely gargantuan white marble monument in Rome?

We were very conscious by then that we were getting dehydrated and, with the total dearth of supermarkets, we were happy to head into the adjacent Maccas for a drink. While we were there, I supplemented my long-gone lunch with a chicken burger (1 Euro) and J felt that she didn’t really want long-life croissant and biscotti so she had one too. Cheeseburgers in Perth are of similar size and have recently increased by 30% (WHY?) to $2.60.

Victor Emmanuel II arcade

Leonardo Da Vinci

Off the Duomo square to one side was the VEII shopping arcade – a massive cross shaped high-arched edifice constructed with the best materials and impeccable style, and populated by the Royal Family of retail excellence – the central crossroads were dominated by Gucci, Prada, YSL . . . and another McDonalds.

It began, in 1864, as the most posh of endeavors. A magnificent, towering glass and steel roofed arcade, designed by the Italian architect Giuseppe Mengoni and dedicated to the Savoy king, Victor Emmanuel II, was erected to connect Milan's Piazza Duomo with Piazza della Scala, home of the famed opera house.

The resulting six-story Galleria, lined with upscale shops and chic cafés, is heralded by historians as the grandfather of the modern shopping mall. But back in the 19th century, the Galleria was known as the grand salotto — a central, public drawing room for the city's most chic patrons to socialize and shop.

We emerged from the other side into yet another beautiful square surrounded by beautiful buildings. I was committed to a towering rant about the inadequacies of Perth architecture when J pointed out that the central statue was Leonardo and the building at the end was La Scala, the world famous opera house. No wonder it looked good.

Sorry pic is dark...this stage is enormous...dismantling last nights set

Royal box and 'normal' boxes

Puccini

We decided that one of us should go in to get photos and I was selected because I qualified for Seniors discount L The theatre was huge and beautiful – rather like a giant version of the Cunard Victoria’s theatre. The auditorium reacted well to my rendition of La Donne e Mobile – not Verdi’s version but the one from College:

Ta ra ra boom di ay

We went to Monterey

We played with dolls and toys

That’s why we’re sissy boys.

 (J: hmmmm...thank goodness I wasn't in there with him)

The museum was a repository of thousands of paintings and statues of generations of composers, musicians, dancers and singers. I snapped pics of Caruso, Nijinski and Maria Callas. It seemed a pity not to share the experience so I sent J in for a look as well.

She pronounced herself so enthralled that she wanted to attend a performance. I winced, choked and croaked out that it would be my pleasure to accompany her. The posters outside were advertising the previous night’s performance of Don Giovani but there didn’t seem to be a ticket office. We went back into the place that was selling tickets to the museum and viewing access to the boxes, where we learned that the Summer season had ended just as we were pulling into the city last night and that the Autumn season would commence in September. Phew
(J:  Now it is one of my lotto dreams)

We strolled back to the hotel via the central park where we rested to inhale a 2l bottled water and watch the passers-by passing by. Supermarkets sell 2l water for 29c. We also  picked up some salmon for dinner. It turned out to be Scottish (the tartan on the packet should have been a clue) and when we tried to eat it we found that it was not sliced!

So tomorrow we need to get back to central station by 9am to catch a train down to Savona where we will catch the Costa boat to the eastern Mediterranean and Israel.

Beautiful old trams

Beaautiful Milan train station

I see 3 hardy thrill-seekers have already started on yesterday’s blog. Goodonyas. We had better get this one up.