Friday 3/18: Doing the tourist thing (3/5)

In the morning, I asked at the reception when they thought the Internet connection might be up again. The lady on duty shrugged and said maybe there would be someone to fix it later that day. Needless to say, it remained broken throughout my stay there.

I met the girls at the Loreto underground station and we took the train down to the "Giardini Pubblici" - literally "Public Gardens" -, which my guidebook made out to be almost like an Italian version of Central Park. The park really wasn't much. The entrance area smelled like a public bathroom, the vegetation was rather sparse and the whole place felt quite small and cramped. The park contained a tiny anonymous building described as "a world-famous planetarium" by my guide, and a vast structure housing a museum of natural history. My co-travellers being girls they had no interest in looking at dinosaur skeletons, so we didn't go in.

We did however go to a small cafe in the park to get breakfast - croissants, sandwiches, coffee and water. It tasted quite good, and the experience might even have been a pleasant one if not for the fact that the area was besieged by a zillion noisy Italian school kids. Sadly, there were too many adult supervisors around for me to trip the little fuckers up and watch them fall face first into the mud, but oh! the temptation.

Afterwards, we walked through the rest of the park and there were some nice rock formations and trees on the way - I'm sure the place looks better in the summer. Still, it's barely a five minute walk in size, and we soon reached the other end, at which lay another of those vast palaces that seemed to be everywhere in Milan. We stopped outside to take a few pictures, and as if on cue, three mounted Italian cops came up to us. People started gathering and the girls got some pictures. Ms K even dared to stand beside one of the horses, while I wisely kept my distance - not because I have any fear of horses, but I'm used to these animals, and one of my truisms is never to trust a horse with flattened ears. It turned out I was right. The beast was clearly impatient, and was stomping the ground and shaking its head, so people quickly withdrew. The policeman tried to keep a macho posture and act as if this was nothing, but he was clearly having trouble controlling it.

We kept walking out of the park and after a few minutes of confused map reading (due to my useless guidebook); we finally found our way to the Museo del Risorgimento. This was quite a brilliant little gem of a museum, with informative texts in English. The topic was mainly the history of the Lombardy region from the invasion of Napoleon in the 1790s to the final unification of Italy in the 1860s. They had some interesting objects there, like regalia that were used when Napoleon was crowned king of Italy in the Milan Cathedral, and a hat he had worn during his exile on the island of Elba.

The staff was the only problem, since they hardly spoke a word of English between them, and it caused the morons a lot of trouble to figure out what we were asking for when we inquired if the last "e" in Bonaparte was silent or not. Honestly, how much IQ does it take to figure out what the matter is when three people are pointing at the written name and going "BonaparT or BonapartE" with a questioning look bordering on an insane leer? Honestly!

On the outside, I managed to have my picture taken while sticking a finger up the nose of a big marble bust of Napoleon. I'm thinking this should become a future theme of my travels, since I've got a picture of myself doing the same thing with Lincoln outside his mausoleum in Springfield, Illinois. Now, I don't mean to be disrespectful, certainly not to old Abe, it's just one of these things you HAVE to do when given an opportunity. When we got out of the museum, Ms S announced that she would really like to see the famous Da Vinci picture "The Last Supper". We'd discussed it earlier and agreed it wasn't all that interesting, but the plea was now delivered in the tone of someone on the verge of going postal, so I didn't argue.

We tried to flag down a taxi, but to no avail. An American woman walked by and informed us that in Milan, you couldn't hail taxis on the street, you had to go to a taxi station. Fortunately, there was one just a few minutes away, and soon we were on our way to the church of Santa Maria della Grazie, where the picture was kept. Sadly, an Italian trade union for public employees had chosen this day to arrange a nationwide strike, so the museum part of the church was closed. I'm not sure if we would have gotten in anyway, since there was sign saying one had to make an appointment in advance. I'm just glad we weren't in the shoes of an older American couple who arrived a few minutes after us. They'd flown in from Istanbul, Turkey to see the picture, tickets in hand and everything.

We decided to walk from the church to the Cathedral, and the disappointment over the closed museum soon faded, as we passed a shoe shop on our way. I've never figured out what it IS about shoes that makes women go crazy, and I suppose that as a straight male, I'm probably not meant to either. Instead, I spent 10-15 minutes in silent agony while the girls quickly went through an impressive number of shoes in rapid succession. Ms S finally settled on a couple of pairs that to the male eye looked like any other pair, but which no doubt held some inner quality only apparent to the female brain - again, such as it is.

After this little shopping orgy/agony, we were ready for lunch and decided to try a bar-looking establishment. It was crowded, as we were now in the Italian lunch break, which usually goes from around 12:30-1 until 1:30-2 PM. This place didn't have any menus, not even in Italian, and I soon regretted the choice. I was taken to a glass display just around the corner from the bar, and had to choose between various unappetizing and unidentifiable plates of food. I settled on a fairly safe looking dish with meat and peas and managed to eat half of it. To this day, I still don't know what kind of animal it was, but I noticed a disturbing lack of dogs in the area.

We left the place with its highly disappointing meal, and crossed the street over to an ice-cream parlor to drown our sorrows in sugar. And let me tell you - if nothing else, the Italians at least know how to make good ice cream. I had a mix of lemon and strawberry, and it was pure heaven. Later we walked the last bit of the way to the Cathedral Square, which is considered Milan's centre and great public meeting place.

The Cathedral itself is an impressive building, and probably Milan's greatest tourist attraction. They started building it in the 1380s, and have been at it ever since, with customary Italian efficiency and planning skills. One of the most famous aspects of the structure is the front, which is built in several totally different styles, due to the long time it took to build it. In other words, people are flocking to see something that you would otherwise sue the contractor for if it had happened to any other building. Beats me.

While walking across the square we were accosted by several individuals who for some reason tried to put birdseeds in our shirt pockets or our hands (the place was full of nasty, filthy, disease-ridden pigeons and how I hate those flying rats). I quickly told every approaching seed carrier to fuck the hell off, and this seemed to do the trick, while the girls, being somewhat more polite, were harassed no end. I don't know why they were doing this, nor why they were so insistent, but I assume the whole scheme was a creative introduction to begging, which seems to be a major sport in Italy. Beggars are everywhere, and they can be damn persistent too. Personally, I'd pay good money for a hunting license on them.

We first walked around the Cathedral to admire the structure - it has over 2,000 statues on the outside and some gigantic painted windows. We could feel a cold draft coming from one of the open side doors, and when we finally went inside, it couldn't have been more than 10-12C (50-54F) in there. I almost had a laughing fit, as I spotted some kind of movable elevator thingy in the middle, (they were probably repairing something in the ceiling) and immediately thought well, there's a novel attempt at "nearer my God to thee"... uhm... well... I guess you had to be there...

Afterwards we had a highly overpriced bottle of water and a coke at an outdoors cafe next to the square, where we were once again accosted by beggars. We then went into the "galleries" in the building north of the Cathedral - a network of shopping arcades with brand names like Gucci, Prada and such. The girls did some window-shopping, while I bought a small pennant for my favorite Italian football team (Juventus of Turin, in the unlikely case you care). At the other side of the galleries was an open square with a statue of a rather Jedi knight-looking Leonardo Da Vinci. We dutifully took some pictures before going to catch a train to the railway station to inquire about rental cars for the next day.

Now, we had only discussed this in the loosest of terms the night before, but as the day proceeded, it became increasingly clear that we all wanted to go on a road trip. The girls had told me about a cheap bus tour that their hotel had advertised, but we wanted more freedom of movement than such a trip would have allowed. We went around looking for car rental agencies, but the first couple of places we tried were closed on this Friday afternoon. Most of them also informed us they would be closed Saturday afternoon and all of Sunday, so we were getting a bit desperate when we finally reached the last company - AVIS. They were still open, bless their greedy little souls, and with English-speaking professionals who knew how to make a sale. We had tons of questions about all sorts of things (well, the girls had, mostly) and they were all answered to great and informative lengths. The price quoted us was quite high compared to US prices - around €125 (ca $ 175) for 24 hours is literally highway robbery - but divided on three it was still bearable. We didn't sign anything there and then, but we got them to hold a car for us until the next morning.

Feeling adventurous and upbeat, we then took a cab back to the hotel. We spent a little time discussing where to go the next day, and the yanks were almost giddy with excitement. We then rounded off with dinner at a relatively mediocre place - the food was ok, but the service sucked - and then we went to our old friend Achilles' place for coffee and dessert. The man himself was at the head of a table, probably entertaining a new group of customers, but he recognized us and got up to greet us as we walked by. The food and service here was as impeccable as it had been the night before, and we were all content and full when we finally said our goodnights and set off to our lodgings.