Day 52: Milan

September 11, 2015

Milan city camping has worked well for us so far. Our stuff feels quite safe, and all the services we need are here. That includes a little store with fruit, cheese, salami, and croissants, and a restaurant where we can sit and charge devices while typing the blog. They even have a mini farm, with sheep and goats, chickens, and even some peacocks.

Peacock at the Milan camping - also sheep, goats pheasants etc

Since Milan is so huge and spread out, the best part of the camping is its good bus connections. The buses in turn put you on the subway system. From today's experience, both systems work extremely well. They were quite easy to understand, cheap, and had frequent service.

It is often a struggle to fight one's way though the tangle of ugly modern city that always surrounds the beautiful old cities. Depending on the size and layout of the town, this can be a little better or worse, but it is never great. Bolzano, for example, was a real bug. With Milan, since we are sure cycling would be really impossible, the bus and subway was a necessity. But after that, the fact is that it injects you right into the great stuff with no fuss.

The lady at the little store gave us a good tip, pointing out that there is an Expo 2015 ticket office and info point just near the Castello Sforzesco, which is a big fort thing near downtown. In fact there are three points - the fort, the Duomo, and the luxury shopping district that encircle the rest of downtown. These three things are joined by major walking streets, making for a large fun area unimpeded by traffic.

We cleverly got off the metro near the fort, and collected not only Expo tickets for the next two days (84 euros total - 21 euros per day per person) but also a city map and free guide book. The guide book was brilliant, the best we have seen to date. We have not added up the total number of sights listed, but it is well over 100. The good part is that the things are partitioned into 13 colour coded topic areas, like City Centre, Ancient Roman and Medieval Milan, Great Churches, Buildings, Shopping, etc. Then on the map you can see where everything is, and understand what you are looking at according to subject colour. For each of the subject colours, the guide then goes place by place, providing capsule summaries of each sight. Cool! (and free).

We began by walking the street from the fort to the Duomo, which is called Via Dante. Here we got out first look at characteristic old Milan buildings. These are very reminiscent of Paris - about six stories high, with very decorative windows and a certain amount of pastel colouring. In the street were thousands of people walking - it is so very great when they are not confined to sidewalks by bullying cars! The stores along the street were typical clothing, home accessory, cell phone, etc. ones, interspersed with restaurants. We paused to listen to a street musician playing the theramin, which is the instrument you play through a magnetic field, without touching anything. This is famous with us, anyway, because it features in the theme music from our favourite British mystery show, Midsomer Murders.

The first walking street, from the castle

The big thrill comes when you round a slight bend and come to the Duomo. You know you are there because first you hit McDonald's! But the Duomo! This thing really is one of the greatest. First off , it is made of white marble. Next, it has a gothic design that involves a zillion airy spires. The pictures will be worth a thousand words here:

Poor lion, he looks really irritated by that pigeon

Aside form the overall stupendous impression of the duomo from a distance, there is the detail of the facade, which like many duomos features uncounted statues, gargoyles, and stone filligrees. In the large square in front of the duomo was a crowd of people - a large crowd. They were generally milling about, taking a million photos, about half of the building and half of themselves in front of the building.

The Duomo is made of marble and is covered in marble carving

Working the crowd were some dozens of vendors, about half selling selfie sticks and the other half with some sort of little string friendship bracelet. These vendors are puzzling, and I would like to know more about their background (but do not really want to get involved with them). All are black, seeming to be Africans. though some might also be East Indians (would need to be from the south of the sub-continent to be so dark). All had exactly the same stock. It seemed a tough business - invest in 100 euros of stuff from some central supplier, and try to flog it, with competition from dozens of countrymen.

Those in the crowd who were not milling or taking selfies were lined up to buy tickets to get in to the duomo. Others were then lined up to actually get in. The ticket line was very long, and slow. As we looked at it, we noticed a large sign that siad buy your tickets online and avoid the line. So we sat down on the steps and fired up the named website on the smartphone. I looked for a while, but failed to see how to buy tickets on that site. So I turned the phone over to the more patient Dodie - and she failed too. So sour grapes, we told ourselves we had already seen lots of church interiors, so forget it.

Outside the duomo, trying to buy a ticket online

As we walked away we came across a tourist information, and went in just for the hell of it. On a whim, we asked the lady just how one would buy duomo tickets online. She actually did manage to find almost the spot, and with a little more work we could have done it, but she had another idea. People do not know, she said, that there are two other ticket offices beyond the one where everyone is lined up. So we shut down the phone and just walked over to one of these. Thirty seconds later, we were in. Weird.

Actually, before going in people had to be checked by the army. We asked two of the heavily armed kids whether this was because today is September 11. No, they replied, it's every day.

Security check. Makes sense,, this really is a world treasure.

Inside, the duomo is huge, like huge - and also high. Otherwise, it had the standard allocation of mind boggling stained glass and other decoration. I don't mean to sound blase, these places are way beyond the normal for human achievement, and they are well worth visiting.

A brass carving section on the facade has shiny points where people have rubbed it.

Soldiers look dangerous, but are sweetie pies to talk to.

The power fo Samsung is amazing. They have this giant advertising screen mounted on the duomo. They achieved it by contributing to duomo restoration.

The duomo floor is entirely marble like this

There are several of these sarcophagi= we are not sure if the deceased archbishop or whoever is actually in there - mummified?

The windows are not always stained glass but seem more like paintings, kike this.

But, great as a church is, it is hard to beat shopping. Directly off the Duomo square is a covered galleria. To just call it a covered galleria does not do it credit, since this was an entire street of ornate multistory buildings both sides, all covered by an ornate glass roof. The stores now were more along the line of the famous names, like Prado and Gucci.In fact there were two Prado stores, kitty corner to each other, one for men, one for women. So off I traipsed into Prado (men's), the very image of sartorial splendour in my cycling shorts and safety vest. I made the elegant staff behind the counter listen to my story of cycing through Valentine, Texas, where there is also a Prado store (at least a mock one, but with real Prado product in the window).The pople were very polite and friendly, and told me they already knew about the Valentine Prado. Wow. Small world.

We always like Pope memorabilia, even this Francesco bobble head. The Jesus one is actually "Buddy Christ" from a George Carlin film. We wonder if the Italians realize this was a spoof. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddy_Christ

The floor of the Galleria is spectacular. Here is a bit of it.

I was thinking that this block long Milan arcade was the famous Milan fashion store area, but no. This was just a sample. We needed to continue to the real area - which is the third anchor of the downtown scene. Before we could head over there, though, there was the matter of using a washroom. Along one side of the duomo square is a sort of food fair, which includes an actual Burger King, and several Italian homegrown fast food operations. That is where the washrooms were. The remarkable part was not that they charge 50 cents for a turn (we have now come to expect that) but the degree of automation. There is a change machine that will eat your 5 euro note and return five one euro coins, Then there is a turnstile that will take your euro coin and return change. What it actually does is to print a bar coded ticket, and a reader for that ticket actually lets you in. By this time, I almost forgot why I came!

Part of the Galleria roof. The Galleria has been copied in shopping centres worldwide

The real high fashion area is far more extensive than I thought. Plus, the number and variety of names represented was more than I imagined there were in the industry. I just noted a few as we strolled by: Versace, Prada (again), Armani, Gucci, Pennyblack, Mango, Max and Co, Tiffany, MaxMara, Bershka, Ferragamo, Fendi, Cavalli, Zanotti, Dolce and Gabbana, - they just went on and on. At first we expected the window displays would not have prices, because if you have to ask... But in fact, many did have the prices on discreet cards in the corners.

It's hard to really characterize the prices, but generally a purse is 1500 euros, and a real piece of clothing is 4500. I did spot a giveaway silk tie for 39. Shoulda bought it for Joshua!

Next photos show some of the Milan fashion items and prices. We did not see a single thing we would want even if given to us for free.

A status of Leonardo. Da Vinci lived here for 20 years

We also passed on the Da Vinci museum. That would not automatically be lost on us, but there is a limit to what you can do in a day. This is a Da Vinci city, though, as he worked here for 20 years, and painted the Last Supper here, for example. We consoled ourselves, remembering we had indeed spent a lot of time at the Da Vinci museum in Clos Luce, France.

We did manage to tick off at least one miscellaneous church from the list, the Basilica of San Babila. We felt "sorry" for this one, since it is surrounded now by much more recent buildings. Inside there was something unique - instead of paintings, the images were mosaics - very finely done.

We managed to exit the city fairly well, with only a few misgivings about getting on the right subway and getting off the bus at the right spot. It had really been worth the effort of coming to Milan and going into downtown. Now we are looking forward to Expo. The advance materials make it look really interesting. The theme is food - we like that!

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