A Day in Milan: Girls Trip to Italy

Today, we got up early so we could catch the train before 8:00, so we could get to Milan before our 10:00 appointment to Santa Maria Delle Grazie where Da Vinci's Last Supper is located. We got off the train and rushed to get to the subway, we were cutting it so extremely close.  We got out of the subway at our stop right at 10:00 and realized that it was still a 10 minute walk to the church.  We all put on our speed walking shoes and walked/ran to the church square.  When we got there someone from our tour told us we had to hurry and drop our bags in the lockers and get inside because our tour was about to leave without us, and we wouldn't be able to join them.  We threw our bags in the lockers and were super grateful that they were free, then went into the Bramante Sacristy, which is a former convent, to start the tour.

The tour guide had already been giving historical information for the last 15 minutes, and the second we walked in we went from an open atrium to a small hallway.  The doors into the hallway locked behind us and the doors ahead were closed and locked.  Come to find out, only a small tour group is allowed in the building at one time.  Each tour group is only given 15 minutes in the actual room with the painting of the Last Supper, then they must leave.  The tour is an hour long, because you walk in stages until you enter the room, so the wait is filled with facts and history lessons.  It was a good thing we weren't any later, because once the door is locked they don't let anyone back or forward, you have to stay with your designated group.

We entered a large dark room with paintings on either ends of the walls.  This was not what I was expecting.  My entire life, I thought the Last Supper, by Da Vinci was on canvas and was a small picture.  To my surprise, it spanned an entire wall.  It is beautiful! I learned that The Last Supper was started in 1495 and Da Vinci did not have any experience working with mural fresco painting.  He used pigments directly on the dry wall, instead of on wet plaster.  Because of this, the painting is deteriorating due to humidity and earthly elements.  It is not withstanding the test of time.  The painting has to be continually restored due to flaking, vandalism, and the bombing and probably very little of it is still original.

The tour guide then sped up her talking by about 100% and was now talking full speed ahead to cover as much information as possible in the allotted 15 minutes.  She started by talking about who was in the painting and how they knew who it was.   It is said that this painting depicts the apostles reactions after being told by Jesus that one of them would betray him.

The painting divides the apostles into groups of three.  The first group of three are Bartholomew, James, son of Alphaeus and Andrew. I missed this part of the talking because I was reading the plaque and not realizing what she was talking about.

The next three are Judas Iscariot, Peter and John.  Judas is holding the silver peices in a bag in his right hand.  The older man beside him is Peter.  They know this is Peter because he has a knife in his right hand. John has long hair and we were told it is to represent the male and female in the universe.

The next group of three are Thomas, James the Greater and Philip. Thomas has his finger up as in a doubting expression. Phillip has a sweet face and hand on his heart.

The last group of three are Matthew, Jude Thaddeus and Simon the Zealot. This group isn't looking at Jesus, but their bodies are gesturing towards Him.

In the last restoration of the painting, a water jug was uncovered as well as more details of the food.  It was neat that I was able to see the faint outline of the water jug in person. The table also holds bread, fish (eel) and glasses of wine.

Something amazingly neat that I learned about this painting is that it survived the bombings during WWII.  The entire side walls and building was bombed but miraculously, the walls with the paintings survived.  The Last Supper, in 1940, was completely covered by sandbags and scaffolding in hopes of keeping it safe from potential bombing.  And safe it was.  It was incredible seeing pictures of the entire wall covered and secure in preparation for the war.

After learning all the fascinating details about The Last Supper, we were directed, with the last 5 minutes of our tour, to the painting behind us.  This paining is The Crucifixion by Donato Montorfano. The Crucifixion was not covered or protected during the war, but it also survived the bombing of the church.

When our time was up, we were very quickly and rudely pushed out of the room.  We found ourselves in a much smaller room with photographs of The Last Supper.

The tour guide was only given 10 minutes in this room before once again the doors were opened and we had to leave.  After leaving the room, we were then taken on a tour of the Church.

We left the church and walked around the Bramante Sacristy- which is a former convent and found the best view of the church was available here. We still wanted to see the Duomo, so we left the tour early and jumped on the next subway to the Duomo.

We got out of the subway and was awarded with the beautiful view of the Duomo Cathedral Square.  The sun was so bright and was reflecting off the white of the Cathedral, making me very happy that I had sunglasses. Heather Gillespie was joking about the new fad Instagram photo, so we tried it out for a laugh.  It's the one with the photographer holding the person's hand as they walk away.  It's super cheesy, but we had a good laugh.

We needed to get tickets to go to the Cathedral's roof, so we started walking to the ticket office.  On the way to the ticket office we stopped at the main elaborate doors of the Cathedral.  The doors were made between 1894-1908 and it depicts the stories from the life of Mary. There was one spot on the door that has been touched so many times that it shone bright gold from the oils from so many hands, it was the carving of Mary holding Jesus' hand as he walked to Jerusalem.

We were super nervous we wouldn't be able to go to the roof because we all had our backpacks.  We packed super light and we all brought only backpacks for the purpose that we knew we were going to have to have our bags with us all day today without anywhere to put them.  Luckily and with a sigh of relief, they let us pass security and go up the elevator to the top.  The rooftop of the Duomo di Milano was exquisite.  It was amazing.

We came out and found that we were walking on the roof.  I thought it would be just around the top, but it was actually just all over the roof and around the entire top of the church.  The views of all the steeples and angles was so amazing.  

We enjoyed taking our time as we walked all the way around the entire top.  There was a small staircase that took you to the highest point of the church.  The stairway was crazy narrow and steep.  That was the only point where I felt uncomfortable, but everyone was considerate and would wait so two people weren't passing each other.

At the highest point, the highest steeple was under renovation, so we couldn't see that part, but Heather laughed and said it looked like it had an angle Moroni at the top, just like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Temples.  The flying buttresses were actually my favorite architectural feature of the roof.  I always thought Gothic style was dark and sharp angles, but this white and beautiful gothic cathedral has changed all my prejudices of gothic style churches.  If you are ever in Milan, I highly recommend going to the roof and make sure you have a lot of time to be able to see the fine art work in sculptures, pinnacles, spires and the buttresses.  

We had set an alarm on our watches before we started our whirlwind day as the "book it to the airport" alarm.  As we were searching for food our alarm went off, so we went straight to the subway and made it to the airport in time to make our flight.  This was a short trip and we only had one day in each city, but it was fabulous.  I really love Italy. I love the food, the gelato, the architecture and the history.  What an amazing and beautiful country.  I'm glad I got to share this trip with two amazing ladies and friends, Heather and Rebecca.

A Day in Verona: Girls Trip to Italy

We got up early to catch a train by 9:00.  This sure hasn't turned out to be a relaxing trip, there is just too much to see and too little time.  We made it to the train station, luckily, because  we knew the way now because our wandering in Venice the day before. It was a short ride of about an hour to Verona. When we got to Verona we were a little disappointed to find it wet, cold and foggy.  There was a light sprinkle and the wind was making it so freezing cold.  Luckily our Airbnb let us drop off our bags so we could go exploring.  We walked down Via Pallone to the visitor center to get a map and idea of hours for the tourist spots.  We passed by an ancient wall, which was part of the Porta Nuova.  The wall had statues and exhibits on it.

We found out from the tourist office that nothing opened today until after 1:00.  We had about an hour, so we decided to check out the outside of the Verona Arena first, then walk through the shopping district.

The Arena reminded me of the Colosseum in Rome and since I have already been in two Colosseums/Arenas, and neither Heather or Rebecca cared about going in or paying the entrance fee we were all perfectly happy just seeing it from afar and taking pictures from the outside.  We did learn that the Roman Amphitheater is still used today for summer programs and operas. That would be super cool and worth the money, in my opinion, to watch an opera in the Arena. 

The shopping streets started right next to the Colosseum, so we walked the shops.  The first shops we went by were super expensive and high end stores.  We were more looking for the cheap and dumb touristy shopping, so we kept going.  We did pass by a gelato store, and it's never too early in Italy for Gelato, right?!? The shops turned from high end modern clothes to antique and novelty stores.  We stumbled upon an old stamp and stationary store.  Now this was a cool store!  The shop even had an old Heidelberg original printing press in the back that we got to peek at.

Rebecca is a publisher and writer, so she was so excited to see the printing press and the store.  We spent a good half hour to hour in the store just looking around.  In the end, Rebecca ended up buying a stamp. We also found out that the shopkeeping can custom make stamps and letter seals.  

After leaving the stationary store, we made our way to the Ponte Pietra, which is the bride in the north part of the city. The little Italian houses before the bridge were super cute.  I love the bright and cheery colors they paint the buildings and how all the building looked so old.

From the bridge we could see both sides of the bank.  We could also see just how yucky the weather was too.  The fog was so thick and there wasn't much of the beautiful city that we could make out from the thick grey.  

After crossing the bridge we paid the small fee to ride the funicular up to the Castle San Pietro.  The best views of the city are supposed to be from the lookout at the top. The fog kinda messed that up, as all I got was a grey sad looking city.  Oh well, you win some and loose some.  

We walked all around the castle, but sadly it is currently under renovations, so you can't go in.  It also looks as if it is someones residence and the ruins were being turned into something modern.  It was a shame and a bit of a let down.  Not only did we not get a great view, but there wasn't a cool castle to see.

We left the castle and took the funicular down and decided to check out the Basilica di Santa Anastasia.  The lady that helped us at the tourist center highly recommended making a stop at this cathedral.  We bought our entrance fee and an audio guide and went around the church.  The church was cold and honestly like every other gothic cathedral I have been in.  The Saints and statues were all Saints that I didn't recognize or understand the history of, so after a few minutes, we all looked at each other and decided this was a beautifully cold gothic church and we had seen and heard enough.

As we left the church, I was even colder then when we went inside, due to how very cold it was inside.  We walked back to one of the main squares with stalls of tourist souvenirs.  We decided to check out the shops, and Heather and I were so cold we both bought hats to keep our heads warm.

Our next stop was one that I was really looking forward to, Juliet's house.  This is the house that has the balcony that inspired Shakesphere for the Romeo and Juliet Balcony scene.  I watched "Letters to Juliet" before coming and that made me even more excited to see this beautiful and romantic place.  As we came into the small yard we were first greeted with huge signs covering the arch of the entrance stating things like, "Do not write on the Wall" in a bunch of languages.  And then we walked into the full glory of the dumpster this square has become.  All the walls surrounding the small yard were covered in trash and gum and graffiti.  It was disgusting.  It wasn't even cool modern art looking, it was just gross and disappointing.

There was a statue of Juliet below the balcony and lines of people were there to take pictures with her and I had to take a double take because they were all grabbing her boob in the picture.  Ever. Single. Person.  Girl, boy, kid, grandparent, all of them were filling up Juliet.  What the heck?  I wondered.  In an open protest we took a picture and Rebecca placed her scarf around Juliet for our picture.  Come to find out there is some story out there that says you will have good luck if you touch Juliet's right breast.  I say hogwash. There is also a saying that if your friend jumps off a cliff, that doesn't mean you should too.

We left Juliet's house disappointed and feeling violated on behalf of Juliet and made our way to the Castelvecchio Castello Scaligero. Castelvecchio means "Old Castle" in Italian, and this old castle ruled the city in the Middle Ages.

We were able to walk all around the grounds of the old castle.  There was an old bridge that crossed the river and we took a walk across.  The sky was finally beginning to clear up and the sun was coming out and melting the fog away, so from the bridge we finally got a better view of the south side of the city.  There was a place on the bridge were you could climb a small stairway to a lookout point, and we enjoyed some warm sun rays and the city view for a bit.

By this point in the day we were all starving, so we went on the hunt for food.  It literally became a hunt because every restaurant we went to was closed.  I guess Italians don't eat dinner until extremely late, so restaurants don't open until 8 pm around here.  We found two restaurants that were open, but they didn't have a gluten free option, and Rebecca needs GF, so we kept searching.  We finally found a place that had GF on the menu, so exhausted and hungry we sat down for dinner. The appetizer was so fun, it was an Italian appetizer with bread, cheese, nuts and honey.  

Before coming to Verona, I was expecting today to be my favorite day.  From all my research, everyone talks about how beautiful and enchanting the city is.  I don't know if it was due to the fog and chilly weather, or everything opening so late because it was Monday, or the massive disappointment in Juliet's house, but the sites weren't great today.  Luckily the company was fantastic, so that made the day fun.  However, Verona isn't on my list of places I would want to return to, it just wasn't all it is hyped up to be.