"The Creator made Italy from designs by Michaelangelo." --Mark Twain

Okay, so it’s a tad strange that my blog that is supposed to detail our lives in NYC actually begins with a trip to Italy; timing-wise, it’s just how it shook out.  Somehow I pushed through, ever the trooper. ;)  Although there are quite a few prompts behind my starting this blog, two reasons really cemented the decision:  1) To share our lives with our friends and family members who are scattered across the globe, and 2) To document these adventures for ourselves.  I realized recently that we spend a lot of time behind the lens capturing memories, but we fail to really catalogue those memories in a way that will let us revisit them when we’re sitting in our rocking chairs reminiscing about “that time we went to…”

So while we spend 99% of our time in New York, thus so will my blog, I knew it was now or never with the documenting memories thing  – Italia, here we come!  First stop, Milano!  (That’s spoken in my now trademark “Southern/Italian” dialect.)

Milan was the only city in which we secured a guided tour; we largely opted for the ‘wandering the streets, self-guided tours’ experience throughout our journey.  In Milan, Raja really wanted to see The Last Supper painting by Leonardo da Vinci, and he discovered that tickets can be sold up to a year in advance.  I’m quite the early-bird planner, often to his chagrin, so he wondered how so many people beat me out on purchasing tickets.  It turns out that if the traditional method of securing advance tickets to see The Last Supper prove unsuccessful, often it’s due to tour companies buying them up in advance.  Since we couldn’t beat them, we joined them, and we were happy we did. J  This means this post will have way more solid information than some of the others; with a trilingual Art History major guiding us around, we heard a huge amount of factual information, rather than my explanations of “back in the day” and “this here church.”   At the bottom of this post, you can find the link to the tour company we used; Raja and I were both really happy with the quality of the tour, knowledge of the guide, and the kindness of the staff.

First stop on the tour was the Milan Cathedral, or Duomo di Milano in Italian.  The guide told us a huge history of the Duomo, including how long it took to build, the types of materials used for the various parts of the structure, etc., but I have to confess I got caught up taking pictures, wandered out of earshot, and missed much of the discussion.  I’m including the Wiki link at the bottom, so you can be more educated than I was, should you want to know more. J  I’ll pretty much just let the pictures speak for themselves, and Wiki can pick up the slack on the factual info.

Situated right by the Duomo is the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, which connects the Duomo with the famous Teatro Alla Scala (an opera house renowned for its perfect acoustics) .  This archway leading into the Galleria was stunning.  Luckily our tour took us right through it; it would have been impossible not to be drawn in to take a peek.  The Galleria is home to some of the oldest shops and restaurants in Milan, as well as today’s most prominent luxury stores; most of these shops and eateries line the bottom floor of the Galleria. When we asked the tour guide what was in the multiple floors above the shops, he said a few hotels are situated here and there, but it’s mostly empty because the rents are just so high.

Our tour then led us through the streets of Milan’s center, past apartment buildings boasting intensely green rooftop gardens, and the tram tracks that tote passengers all throughout the city.  With a quick stop at Sforza Castle, we then wound to Santa Maria delle Grazie, the church that contains the painting of The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci.  I have to confess that this wasn’t the attraction I was most excited about during our planning phases; I was happy to go along because I knew Raja didn’t want to miss it, but I myself wasn’t as excited about this piece as some of the other things we were expecting to see.  I’m surprised and happy to say that in actuality, I was quite taken aback by it when we entered the refectory and had our first glimpse.  I think all 15 of us visiting felt the same way, as all whispering, shuffling around, and fidgeting stopped immediately upon our viewing.  First off, it’s MUCH bigger than either Raja or I expected.  I’ve always thought of The Last Supper as a painting, and it is… but the term “mural” describes it much more aptly.  Measuring 15 feet × 29 feet, it truly does take up an entire wall and seems larger than life.  Second, it really does exude so much emotion through the faces of the apostles as they reacted to Christ’s announcement that one of the apostles would betray him that very night.  You can almost feel the shock, bewilderment, and even anger registering on the apostles’ faces.  It was a much greater experience than I was expecting, and I’m so glad Raja was insistent on including this in our itinerary.

That pretty much wrapped up our guided tour, so we spent the remainder of that day and the next just wandering through some more of the Milanese streets, navigating the Metro system, and snapping photographs of just about everything we saw. J  This city was a great start to our journey through Italy, and before we knew it, it was time to say “Arrivederci!” to Milan as we headed off to the Tuscan countryside.