| Erin's Journal for 3-31-02 It's Easter Sunday in Milan. But first, I'll tell you about Saturday. Yesterday we got up a little late - I had been having trouble sleeping Friday night and took some Tylenol PM around 1 in the morning, and as a consequence could NOT wake up until 9am. No more of that stuff for me! Anyway, after a late start, Glenn and I headed out to the Metro, the local subway. After puzzling out which line we wanted to take for our preferred destination, we bought our tickets for linea 2. Our first stop was the Museo della Scienza e della Tecnica "L. Da Vinci." Basically, the museum of technology with a Da Vinci exhibit. It had a ton of exhibits, including my favorite part, an actual seafaring ship, sails and all, being preserved indoors in a back building! It was really something to see, and took us several hours to walk through. After our tour there, we were both starved and went seeking food. We stopped in an Irish pub called Cafe Magenta, which was overcome with smokers. In fact, all of Milan seems overrun with smokers - at times it made my eyes water, even outdoors! The pub was lively and well decorated though, and had pretty good food. I had my first beer of the visit, a Harps. (I know, you're supposed to try the local lagers, but there weren't any on the menu!) After our meal had refreshed our energy, we walked on until we found the Castello Sforzesco, my first sight of a real castle. It was huge, overwhelming and gorgeous. Upon entering the main gates past a huge fountain, we walked past a wall with the history of the castle laid out chronologically in both Italian and English (we could finally understand what we were seeing!). This castle had been built, remodeled, attacked, pieces torn down, etc. for centuries, and owned by Italians, Austrians, Spanish, French (Napoleon!), and others, each owner making their own changes. But for all that, this monolith still stands and impresses generations to come, especially those who haven't had such historic architecture as a daily sight, like me! |
| After the castle closed around 6, we Metro'd back to the hotel and took a nap, trying to follow a more local custom and putting off dinner until 9pm. But whether due to Easter weekend or not, there weren't many people out eating at that hour, nor were there many ristorantes still open for business. Nevertheless, we found a pizzeria nearby and had a great meal of pizza for me and calzone for him, as well as our first sample of gelatto. I highly recommend the gelatto - yummy! After dinner we called it a night and went back to our room for some late night tv. The Euro Sport and CNN channels were the only ones in English, so that's mostly what we saw. |
| Easter morning, we slept late and lazed around the hotel room. I did a little bit of laundry (socks & underwear) just to make sure we weren't going to have to reuse any smelly items. Glenn did some work with the pocket pc, and I watched CNN and read my novel. Very lazy and nice way to spend the holiday morning. Around 2pm, we both got motivated to head out to enjoy the sunshine and our last full day in Milan. We walked around the neighborhood of our hotel and checked on the internet cafe we'd found to see if it was open, but as most establishments this holiday Sunday, it was closed. So we joined about 350 people in sitting out in the sun near the Stazione Central (central train station, a huge and impressive building too), just enjoying the day and watching the people. |
| We decided to wander a little further afield, and ended up finding a second internet cafe where the rates were about half the first place we'd gone. So we went in and hooked up for about an hour, sending holiday hellos to our families and touching up our website. When we left, the shop was closing down and we started to worry about finding a place for dinner - most restaurants were closed. But we found a great little place near the Stazione Centrale and enjoyed a great meal, the pasta of which I can't even name! I was amused to note that it smelled just like one of the Hamburger Helper recipes I've had back home! It tasted quite a bit better, however. Now we're back in our hotel for the final night, reading up on Venice for our trip there tomorrow. Can't wait! |
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| This is a very small shot of a very large building, Milano's Stazione Centrale, or main train station! |