While it seems an eternity ago, it's worth sharing about: our trip to Italy. Here is the quick link to photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/Irishslim76/Italy2007. WARNING: Several of the photo captions are a bit "colorful."
Saturday, 8 September
The impetus for the trip was to meet friends from Seattle who were spending three weeks in Italy as part of a family trip. We didn't have three weeks, but it only took us 2.5 hours to fly there! Our trip started with a day in the Dublin area with our Seattle friends, who were flying on a very strange itinerary! But we had a nice day helping them work off the jetlag with a walk on the beach at Malahide. Unfortunately the next piece of our journey was not so nice - trying to get out of Dublin airport on Ryan Air. After three gate changes, we were absolutely jammed into a terminal waiting for our flight, not able to move an inch. I ended up as the very last person on the plane, luckily Slim had turned on his city-boy pushiness and had two seats for us together.
We landed in Italy after eight that evening and took a taxi to the hotel in the centre of Bergamo. Our hotel was gorgeous! The lobby was white and bright, but still inviting. We then headed up to our room, which took more brain power than we had at that point to find as the numbers were on the thresholds. Our room was on the top floor and had high peaked ceilings as if we were in an alpine cabin. It was painted a deep indigo with a silver bathroom. We had splurged a little that night, one out of necessity, but also because we knew that we'd be tired from the travel. But not too tired for dinner. Back out into the warm Italy evening, we walked about a block down the road to a family style restaurant for some of the most fantastic pizza I've ever had. Afterwards, we walked Bergamo's main street stopping at Grom for some amazing gelato. Not just amazing because it was my first real gelato experience, even by comparison with gelato enjoyed on the rest of the trip, this stuff was fantastic.
Sunday, 9 September
After our lovely breakfast at the hotel, we headed to the train station, enjoying the warmth of the morning and the views of Bergamo's old town on the hill above. This train ride was short, so we were in Milan by late morning. Arriving in Milan by train, you first encounter the massive, fascist built train station. This place is immense. We had a short list of tasks to be accomplished in the station before searching out our hotel (map of the city, train tickets for later in the week) then headed down under to avail ourselves of Milan's terrific Metro system.
The hotel turned out to be a pretty good walk from the Metro station, but still a great location. It was near the Nivigli district, an area along the Navigli canal known for its nightlife. The hotel was family run - the owners youngster and dog ran around the lobby as we waited a few minutes for our room. The room was much more basic than our Bergamo room, but still nice. We were right over a tram line, but with the window closed, the room was perfectly quiet.
First order of business, lunch. We headed to Via Dante, one of the longest pedestrianised streets in Europe - and that is saying something! It is a grand boulevard, very much the "see and be seen" area of Milan. The goal of the afternoon was museum visiting, as Milan's museums are closed on Mondays (and we were leaving Tuesday morning). We headed to Sforza Castle, a formidable, red brick fortress. We only toured one of Sforza's many museums, the City Museum, which contains an unfinished pieta by Michelangelo - he was actually working on this piece when he died. It is an amazing piece, but what was more amazing was that we enjoyed a Michelangelo alone - there was no one else in the gallery! We then wandered around Milan's massive park watching families celebrating birthdays and young men playing basketball. We had a second museum on the itinerary, but will have to save it for the next trip - Italy is made for wandering about on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
Plus, we would have missed Line Dancing for Lenin! We stumbled upon a tent with a large crowd line dancing. The atmosphere was so jovial, people laughing clapping and dancing. Then we noticed the signs, which of course were in Italian, but we knew enough to translate that we had stumbled upon a Communist fundraiser!
Tip: If museums are your gig, plan Mondays as your recuperation days.
Monday, 10 September
The buzz of a city on a Monday morning. I loved it! It is especially easy to enjoy when you are not yourself on the way to work. We were on our way to explore as much of Milan as we could see in one day. We walked from our hotel through a quiet park coming to a 4th century basilica. Astounding, parts of the building had been in this spot for 1700 years. The centerpiece of this basilica are a set of astounding mosaics. The vibrant golds and intricate patterns of mosaics hundreds of years old, wow.
We continued towards the city centre perusing at a record store to buy our signature souvenir - a random cd that we don't really know anything about. This one would best be described as the Italian Sarah McLachlan or Norah Jones, I like her, but Slim not so much. But that is the adventure of this little tradition that we have.
We missed going into the next church on the plan due to lunch closing. So we trudged on towards the Duomo, the site of which we had purposefully avoided until then - not an easy task in Milan. We decided however that we would need fortification before tackling this incredible site. We headed into the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, Milan's Victorian era mall. Four stories high, about four blocks long and two blocks wide, all covered by a glass ceiling - gorgeous. We did our spun on the bull's ball - a tradition that brings good luck - no I'm not going to explain any more than that, I'm sure you can find something about it on the web if you really want to know!
Then it was time for the pink leviathan that is Milan's Duomo. First off, yes, it really is pink, made entirely of pink marble. And it is the 4th largest cathedral in Europe, which again is saying something as these people build some big cathedrals. We first walked around the outside enjoying the millions of carved statues adorning the sides and the stained glass windows. We then headed inside.
As many of you know, one of the reasons that we knew that Slim and I were destined for one another was how well we travel together. This was a perfect example - we spent four hours on the Duomo, listening to pretty much every track on the audio tour, reading all the signs, admiring the views from the roof. That is a long time to spend on one building, and if either of us had not been interested, it would have been a bad scene!
After thoroughly covering the inside, we headed outside for the elevator ride to the top (too tired for stairs at that point!). The roof is incredible! So full of detailed statues that are obviously meant for close up viewing. The view was a bit obscured by smog, and really what is there to see but a big city (mountains if there isn't smog, I hear). But still amazing.
The main event of our Milan trip was to be our evening of opera at La Scala. In our first discussions of the trip, we had found that Don Quixote was playing at La Scala during our trip. We immediately purchased tickets. We thought that we had hit the jackpot - we aren't opera people at all, but here was a story that we could read ahead of time to understand it better. We were quite wrong - but I'm skipping ahead!
We ended up eating sandwiches in the square in front of La Scala for dinner - I'm not sure what the Italians do about eating on the nights that they go to opera, but they don't go to dinner. Pretty much every restaurant's hours are the same as the opera - before and after. Very interesting. Anyway, we munched our sandwiches in our nice clothes then headed into the opera house. We were turned away at the door! The people in the cheap seats enter at the side, another tip. We finally found our way, went up the lift and entered another time. This place is truly gorgeous and worth every cent for the tickets. The red velvet, gold, crystal of the chandelier - a memory that I will cherish.
Then the performance starts with a few minutes of something that we recognized from the Don Quixote story, then come the dancers, boys in tights, girls in tutus on their tippy toes. Wait, sounds like a ballet - it was! La Scala is an Opera and Ballet performance company it turns out. And honestly, they had some nerve calling this things Don Quixote - there were only a few scenes that we recognised as being related to the original story. But again, we aren't ballet people, so maybe it was in its own way!
After the ballet, we headed out for a late night snack. I expected restaurants to be teaming with late night diners - but no! All was quiet and it wasn't even midnight. We ended up at a hotel bar as one of they few places that was open. In deciding to continue the celebratory aspect of an evening at the ballet, we ordered champagne, a lovely looking drink being enjoyed next to us. Rookie travelling mistake we later realised. 24 Euro a glass!!! Well, it was lovely anyway.
Next morning we left the bustling city and our true vacation began - but I will eave that for another blog.
Ciao!
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