The five hour train ride from Cannes to Milan afforded us the opportunity to watch the view out our window change from the sparkling French sea to the northern countryside of Italy. We were also able swap musical preferences with the group of young Italians sharing our compartment & learned that the Jonas Brothers are, in fact, taking over the world. Once in Milan we witnessed the violent capabilities of angry Italian women and the stubborn nature of ancient Milanese fixtures. (See TGOC - Episode 6) The rest of the night was spent with two AIFS comrades, Craig and Sarah, exploring the city.
Day Two began at Da Vinci's "The Last Supper." Even though we had accidentally made reservations for the day before, the staff took pity on us and allowed us 12 minutes to glimpse the Renaissance Man's great fresco. How could we possibly follow up standing at the base of one of the most recognized artistic works of all time? By watching cats run around a castle for the next forty-five minutes. As lovers of free stuff we took advantage of it being Women's Day in Europe and went to all of the museums housed in the castle - FOR FREE! We saw rooms designed by Da Vinci himself and Michelangelo's last work, the Rondanini Pieta. We enjoyed a nice tea and chocolate croissant at a quaint, Salon de The.
Returning to the Duomo in the center of the city, we were fortunate enough to run into Craig and Sarah. The four of us enjoyed the Ambrosiana Gallery which contains Raphael's cartoon for "School of Athens." The cartoon was extremely impressive and definitely worth a visit to the gallery, which did not offer us free admission. We then bid Craig and Sarah adieu and booked it back to the hostel to get ready for the game. Wearing our new #32 jerseys, we took the concierge up on his offer to drive us to the game. We no longer need to imagine what it is like to travel at the speed of light. Our concierge (name still unclear) may have managed to get us there earlier than when we left the hostel.
Once our heads stopped spinning from the car ride, we were overtaken by the shadow of the almighty San Siro stadium. Blending into the sea of black and red (the team colors of AC Milan) we joined the throngs of eager fans making their way into the stadium. Our seats were high above field level but afforded us the perfect view of the shenanigans that were taking place in the hard-core fan section. And these fans were hard-core; think impossibly large flags and homemade explosives hard-core! It was everything one would expect from Italian soccer and we had a blast. The presence of #32 was just icing on the cake (trillion-dollar, gold-covered, melt in your mouth, make you weak in the knees icing, but icing nonetheless!)
That afternoon we treated ourselves to fancy spritzers on the top terrace of Milan's fashionable, Rinascente (Italian equivalent of Bloomingdale's.) The extraordinary view of the illuminated Duomo was well worth the 12 euro we paid for drinks. After a few hours of decompressing from the game we helped ourselves to some comfort food - sushi. Topping off the evening with chocolate gelato we reminisced about our perfect weekend!
Although our time was short we quickly fell in love with everything Milan had to offer. The people were great, the food was scrumptious and seeing #32 in his element wasn't so bad either....
Until next time. Much love.
-MoffTar
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