Milan Madness

July 28, 2009
So we totally loaded our pictures backwards, so we will take you through our day in Milan starting with the end and working our way to the beginning!
In the evening, there was a giant couchsurfing aperativo! There were over 50 people there, couch surfing hosts and guests all mingling around an outdoor cafe. While there, we met a few travelers from the US and now are in contact with them through couch surfing!
Our last tourist thing of our day in Milan, was going to see Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper painting. It is really difficult to see the painting. They only allow 20 people to see the painting for 15 minutes at a time. You have to request tickets at least 2 weeks in advance and be flexible with your schedule. Going through the church to see the painting, we felt like we were being quarantened. We had to go through a series of rooms where you could not get through one without being locked in the previous one for several minutes.

But it was all worth it! Even though the painting is in really bad shape, it started deteriorating during Leonardo's lifetime, you can still feel the emotion.

This is the church that houses the Last Supper painting. It was almost totally destroyed in WWII and miraculously the wall with the painting survived.

Earlier in the day we went to a museum housed in an old castle!

Michelangelo's Pieta that he was working on up to a few days before his death. For all of you art history buffs out there, it really shows his progression from his earlier years. For the majority of his art career, Michelangelo was all about design and pre planning for his works. He would spend more time developing sketches than actually creating the piece of art. But this sculpture shows that later in his life, he was creating art without any design or pre planning. This sculpture isn't finished, you can still see the chisel marks and areas where he changed his mind about the design.

Across from the Duomo is this famous shopping mall, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele. It is full of ritzy shops, Prada, Gucci, Louis Vitton, etc. Most elegant of them all, McDonalds! Yes, McDonalds managed to land a spot inside next to all of these glamorous shops.

The Duomo had the most impressive stained glass windows! They were gigantic. This one is made up of hundreds of small scenes, each rectangle is roughly 2' x 1' and is a scene from the life of Christ!

Most of the churches in Italy do not allow pictures to be taken. But each church varies in how much they enforce these rules. We were not supposed to take photos here, but everyone did and no one said anything. Other places have been really strict and have guards around to yell at people.

Impressive, isn't it! The is the outside of the Duomo, much different than most of the cathedrals we have seen. It is the third largest cathedral in Europe and dwarfs the Notre Dame in Paris!

Milan really surprised us! We had been told there wasn't much to do or see, but we filled an entire day with great memories and beautiful sites!