Days 11 & 12 - MILAN

Wednesday:
One very tired, footsore and angry old man here tonight!

Farewelled Lake Como on the 0837 Regional Express to Milano Centrale -- just over an hour's run at break-neck speed.  The station here in Milan is somehting to see: on 3 levels with all sorts of shopping and dining built in.  Grabbed some breakfast there; then found the Tourist Office to buy my Milan Card for free public transport, museum entrance discounts etc..  Hotel is only 2 blocks from the station, but I was disoriented when I came out and took four blocks to find it.  First time, no room avaialble until noon.  So I left luggage and went on local walkabout. My main item today was the Milan Walking Tour with visit to see Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper.  Ticket (which I checked online) said to meet outside Chiesa Maria delle Grazie at 1345 .. this is the church where the painting is housed.  I mastered the Metro well, and reached the piazza in good time:   but no tour group in evidence.  Eventually I enquired at the ticket office, and they told me my tour started at the Duomo ( a good 15-20 minutes away) .. I had no chance in making it there in time.  And of course, no tickets left to go in by myself.

So I took myself back to the Duomo, bought the ticket to everything, and started the visit.  First by lift to the terraces and roof:  they literally let you walk over the marble roof of the cathedral nave.  Great views of the city, but mind-boggling just how many carvings there are on the butresses and spires:  all works of art in their own right.  Hired the audio guide then to visit the cathedral itself.  Had to surrender my travel card as security:  was the only piece of ID I carried, conscious of my Oslo experience.  Certainly is one of the great churches of christendom, and not nearly as over ornate or baroque as so many others.  St Charles Borromeo had good taste it seems.  Downstairs they have an archeological dig going on:  have unearhed a baptistery from the earlier Cathedral of St Thecla that preceded the Duomo.  Really interesting artifacts, and easy to see how the city has built upon previous ruins, raining the surface level several feet over the centuries.  Then over the see the Museum.  It houses an amazing collection of statues, models and paintings that were used in the design of the Cathedral.  Too much to take in on a short visit: I was almost running at the end to find the way out!

Back to hotel for a rest;  then dinner at a cucina recommended by the concierge, just a block away.  The most scrumptious onion soup.  Lamb cutlets and grilled vegetables.  Ready for an early night.  Tomorrow may have to be a light day: I'll see how the feet are faring in  the morning.

Thursday:
Up early and had best hotel breakfast yet .. scrambled eggs even.  Then I hit the Metro with the peak hour crowds to get over to Santa Maria delle Grazie and front up to the office there to see if nay cancelled tickets for the Last Supper available.  Sign said "sold out" but I still joined the queue and asked the guy at counter if any chnace there might still be a cancellation later.  He looked me over and said "Is possible" ... juggled his computer some, and told me 1 ticket at 1pm.  I handed over the requisite €6.50, which I noted went into his wallet, not the cash register.  No questions asked!

Back to the Metro, and I searched out La Scala theatre: a quite unimposing building from the outside.  Near here I joined the Hop On Hop Off bus for a circuit of the old city.  Traffic is chaotic in Milan, made much worse by trams everywhere. So the ride around the narrow streets of this ancient city is very slow.  Was noon by time reached the Duomo stop, so changed to Metro and back to S.Maria delle Grazie, in time to have a panino and beer for lunch, then the visit to Leonardo.

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Da Vinci was commissioned to paint the wall at one end of the Dominican friary's refectory.  At the same time on the opposite wall another artist painted a crucifixion scene.  Small groups of 25 are allowed in for strictly 14 minutes to enjoy the paintings.  Seeing it full size (9m x 4.6m) lets one notice all sorts of details not obvious in photos.  For example, the detail of the apostles feet and sandals under the table, the knot in the tablecloth where it overhangs.  Poor old Judas is caricatured as the baddy, being the only dark skinned apostle in the group.  When you stand half way down the refectory, the effect is magical.  The fresco no longer appears as a painting, but as a real-life extension of the room -- so clever was Leonardo's use of perspective.  The crucifixion fresco is larger (uses the full height of the wall) and in brighter colours .. whether this is original, or due to restoration I don't know.  They consider it a miracle that the refectory survived the allied bombing in WW2, as the rest of the monastery and the church were pretty well demolished.  It's quite amazing how faithfully these European cities have rebuilt their treasures after such devasation.  Well, that 15 minutes made the trip to Milan well worth while.

Nearby is an old monastery that has been converted into Milan's Museum of Science and Technology.  I spent an hour there wandering through some of its 10,000 exhibit items.  Of greatest interest to me were the galleries dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci's drawings: anatomy, botany and an amazing array of engineering.  They have made many models according to his plans to see how practical they are.  The nearest we have to this I think is the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney:  but it is miniscule compared to Milan's.

A little further on ( and now open after siesta time) was the basilica of S.Ambrogio.  This is the original church in Milan, built by St Ambrose in the 4th century.  It was built over a centuries' old cemetery that had been taken over by Christians.  The present building is an amalgam of much later additions and replacements, but the pillars of the church still stand in same place as the original.  As usual, lots of fresco fragments are preserved.  In the crypt under the high altar the skeletons of St Ambrose and the martyrs St Gervasius and St Protasius are on display, dressed up in vestments that badly need a dryclean. Ambrose is the patron saint of Milan and his feast day is still a public holiday here.

By now my daily quota of energy was near exhausted, but I took the Metro back to the centre and went looking for La Scala again. This confirmed what I had already discovered: that I find Milan impossible to orient myself in.  I walked well over a km in the wrong direction before I realised it; had to retrace and start all over again.  But I did get to see the La Scala museum and a look inside the famous theatre.  They were setting up for somehting on stage.  What struck me was the size of the orchestra pit:  they must use a full symphony there.

Home for a rest, and then dinner nearby.  I have missed seeing quite a bit I would have liked to get to here in Milan, but the effort of going from A to B to C is quite taxing and time consuming; so I have settled for what I did manage and enjoyed it.  I plan the next couple of days to be much more restful.

And to cap it all:  email just back from the ticket mob telling me that I had my days wrong: I was booked for today, not yesterday!!  How I got that confused I don't know - sure sign of old age and early alzheimers maybe.  Or just that you lose track of time when travelling.

A mixed bag of photos from Milan.  They can be seen here.