Una Vista Magnifica

Today was for sightseeing. No particular schedule, until 6pm, so we were free to see what we wanted.

I slept till 8, which was nice, but shocked me a little when I woke up. We spent some time just getting sorted out first of all: I wanted to book the train to our next destination, because that's only two days away, and I didn't know if we'd have some time here in the morning or what. That took a while to figure out, and in the meantime Stephen looked at what we would do today. We finished up with a list of four things, all very close to each other, which seemed eminently doable. Until that 6pm thing was remembered, and we realized that we'd want to be finished by 3 to come home, rest and change and go out again for 6. Well, we'll see how it goes.

After all that mucking around, we decided not to have breakfast at the apartment. Filippo kindly got in some provisions for us, and though the fruit and yogurt and jam are fine, the bread is awful. Little thin slices of white bread that is actually yellow; it was stale on the first day so I tried toasting it in the toaster/oven, and it only dried it out then burnt it. And it just takes a long time to get breakfast ready then clean up, so since the apartment block is right on the edge of a suburban shopping centre, and the bus stop is right here too, we thought we'd do breakfast the Italian way, and have a pastry or two and coffee, standing if necessary (it's a couple of Euros extra to sit at a table). But the bus was there when we got to the bus stop, so we got straight on.

First sight of the Duomo

On arrival in the centre of the city - our bus goes from 20m from the front door to about 100m from the Duomo's piazza - we found a café and finally had our breakfast. It was now about 10.30, but that's a normal time to be starting off in the city. For us. Breakfast over, we set off again towards the Duomo, and wow. There it was. The first sight of it is a shock. We hadn't done any research, we simply knew we'd have to go and see it, so we were unprepared. It's not like any other cathedral we've seen, or even seen pictures of. It doesn't have a dome, for a start (maybe I was wrong to think there was a connection between the words Duomo and dome). What it has is verticality. And detail. And thousands of statues, literally thousands, inside and out. And it's all in beautiful white marble. Gleaming white spires soaring upwards against a perfect blue sky: it is magnificent.

Columns, and statues

We didn't have skip-the-line tickets - this is Milan, nobody goes to Milan, and especially not outside the summer months. There was a line for entry (okay, a few people go to Milan) and there was also a line at the skip-the-line ticket pick-up window. We walked 100m on to the ticket office, where there was a line of about 3, but a man said we could buy tickets at the machine if we wanted to save more time. So we did. And walked back past the skip-the-line line and queued for just 10 minutes to go in. And the inside was also amazing. They are particularly proud of their stained glass windows here: every single window seems to have stained glass, although the flying buttresses have roofing over them, so the light is not as great as they try to make out. But what takes your breath away is those statues - they're everywhere! Each column (there are 50 or more) has maybe 10, and every one is individual. Some are slightly smaller than life size, and some much larger, but they were carving and sculpting them from the 15th to the 19th century. I just looked it up: apparently there are 3400 statues, 235 gargoyles, and 700 figures. There are also a lot of alto-rilievos (as opposed to bas-relief, which are just slightly 3D, but alto means they're about 3/4 carved out from the background.) My guide book says the church was completed over a century ago, having been announced in 1386 and begun not long after. But there is always ongoing reconstruction, repair and maintenance, of course, still overseen by the same organization whose job it has been since 1387. I liked it because there wasn't gold and paint in its ornateness. (There was some, but just to standard Catholic decoration levels.) It wasn't saying "Look how rich we are." It was the architecture and the engineering that was overwhelming: so many people spending so many hours over so many centuries to play a part and contribute something. Not a few artistic geniuses, but everyday craftsmen and artisans, engineers and labourers. You can see that it was humans at work, and genuinely appreciate their effort. Which, I now realise, is the exact opposite of what a cathedral is generally trying to achieve. Oops. Maybe they need to rethink their design.

Spires, lots of spires

After looking inside, we went up. One innovation that is really appreciated is that to go up high and see the view from the top, you can use a lift. A lift! But where do you go, since there is no dome to walk around and look down or out from? You go up on to the roof. You actually walk around the roofed-over flying-buttress parts, which are called the terraces, and you can climb further up to the roof of the nave of the church. The roof and terraces are also all white marble. According to Mark Twain (and quoted in the guide book), the entire cathedral is made from marble - there is no stone or brick or wood in its construction. They got it for free - a quarry was gifted to the construction organization in perpetuity, and they're still using it.

Galleria V.E.II

When we came down again it was around time for lunch. (The queue for the lift had been 40 minutes long, and I heard the woman in front of us say at one stage "I just don't understand why we paid extra to skip the line." There was definitely only one queue there so I guess that extra payment just didn't apply to this section. I'm glad we didn't pay any extra today.)  Alongside the piazza of the Duomo is some of the fanciest shopping in town. We walked past Tiffany's whose diamonds had the noonday sun glaring squarely at them, and they were glittering bright-whitely like Christmas lights. Then you turn right into the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, which has all the top names. Inside the arcade we also walked past Gucci, Armani, Louis Vuitton and others that the likes of you and I have never even heard of, but we did go into Prada. Filippo works for Prada (in IT), and offered us his staff discount, but even a keyring would be out of our range. We just went in to say we'd been in. The shop assistants ignored us.

We came out the other end of the arcade and looked for lunch. We passed some overpriced restaurants on the way to finding one that was merely a tad expensive, but then, you're in the fancy part of town, so what can you do. We thought that dinner tonight would probably be late and maybe only a quick, light snack, so we had a good hot meal (roast chicken, pork ribs) at a grill restaurant. I forgot to take a photo until we'd finished it all, though, so no food envy tonight.

After lunch we retraced our steps a little to a Leonardo exhibition. There is also a Leonardo Museum of Science and Technology, which may be bigger and better, but this was a display of his sketches and designs actually constructed and also digitisations of more of his work and the restorations thereof. (Speaking of the Last Supper, sort of: we looked into going to see it, but you need a booking. Sure, fair enough. The church where it is is open only Saturdays and Wednesdays. Oh. Only two days a week? Okay. So, maybe Wednesday morning, before we leave? No, only Wednesday evenings. They really don't want people seeing the painting.) In the display we did get to go to, no photos were allowed, unfortunately, but it was a fascinating exhibition.

By now it was 3ish, and Stephen was ready to head back home, in order to come back at 6. The bus stop wasn't far away, but not many buses come all the way back to the apartment area (it's not actually metropolitan Milan at all, it's a different zone altogether, called Segrete, and we're in San Felice. I think that's how it works.) But a bus that does run often, goes to Milan's second airport, which is close to home, so we got one of those buses, got off at the airport (where we went in to find a place that could top up our phone credit for us) and then got a taxi from there back home. Not the cheapest way of going home, but efficient.

Giardino Fencing Club facilities

And then the bus back into town again for 6pm. Filippo was waiting for us at the bus stop, because he was going to take us to his old fencing club. We met him because he came to NZ and did some fencing coaching to... not pay his way, exactly, but perhaps ease the burden of the cost. He had talked about his club, Giardino, and what he said and showed us about it was amazing. So we walked there to see it tonight. It's part of a kind of gentlemen's club, it seems, but the fencing part of it has been operating for 200 years. They have names carved into the walls of members who were Olympic or World Champions. The ceilings are painted to look like leather, and there are bronze statues in the trophy cabinets. It doesn't even smell of sweat. It's a beautiful salon. We were shown into some of the other rooms, meeting rooms, where they might have gala dinners, and sometimes final matches, with their marble floors, gilded ceilings and chandeliers. The Giardino Club website says you must be wearing a suit to enter, which is why we had to walk halfway round the block to the back to get in.

And then Filippo wanted Stephen to meet his own coach, at a more normal fencing club: drab, sweaty, undecorated. This coach wants to live in NZ or Australia and do coaching for a while, and hoped that Stephen would be able to help, with information or contacts. It's all very vague at the moment, but something may come of it. It was interesting to see the two fencing clubs: they're really not a lot different to NZ ones. A lot less space, actually, compared to a school gym in NZ or Australia, and a lot of people sitting around waiting, and talking between points, and some good fencers and some pretty ordinary. No tracksuits though - everyone in full whites looks very classy.

Filippo had talked about having dinner after the visits, but maybe they went on too long or maybe he forgot, but we parted after that and he went home by motorbike and we caught the bus. We did the same again: bus to airport then taxi, and we got back at about 8.40. But for all the talk of "Italians eat at around 8 or 8.30" that we had the night we arrived, now all the restaurants in the shopping centre were closed or closing. We walked past 3 or 4 that we had expected to been able to eat at, and in the end we had to get stuff from the supermarket to bring home. Stephen had yet another ham and cheese sandwich, and I had sushi, and we had some ice cream desserts. A bit of a come-down in terms of a meal, but the food was okay. Again, no food envy here.