Milan and Lake Como

Milan was our last stop in Italy. We had hoped to see Da Vinci's The Last Supper, but we couldn't get tickets. I consoled myself with reading about how disappointed a lot of people are with the painting once they see it, due to its poor condition. Anyway, there's not much else to see in Milan. It's the industrial and business capital of Italy and is unlike all the other cities we visited. Two things stood out for me: Milan has one of the best and easiest to use public transportation systems I've ever experienced (however, this means you hardly see the sky for the overhead wires) and although Milan is one of the fashion capitals of the world, people there dress very poorly compared to Florence and Bologna. Go figure.

Milan does have one outstanding sight: its cathedral. Its outside is the most ornate of all the cathedrals in Italy; but the inside is less impressive than a lot of smaller churches--Verona's for example. Here's a picture of the outside.

One of the doors and detail from another door.

 

The floor was also interesting.

I did find a couple of other shots in Milan that looked good to me.

 

The second one is Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, billed as the world's first shopping center. It's just to the left of the Duomo.

When we couldn't get in to see The Last Supper, we decided to make a side trip to the Lake Country on our extra day. People had told us it was beautiful and they were certainly correct. We took the train to Como and then caught a ferry to Bellagio (two hours--but it seemed shorter). Lake Como is like an inverted "Y" and Como is at bottom of the left leg. Bellagio is at the junction of the two legs. Another ferry took us to Varenna on the eastern shore, where we caught a train back to Milan. The rest of the pictures are from our Lake Country excursion.

The harbor at Como . Also a picture of some guy Susan saw on the ferry.

 

There are beautiful houses, hotels and gardens all the way along the shore. Some houses and a hotel.

 

 

Some gardens.

 

 

As we moved up the lake, the shore got steeper and steeper. The towns looked like they were coming right down a cliff. We turned one corner and it looked like the Alps were rising right out of the lake.

 

Coming in to Varenna and a look at how steep the streets are leading away from the harbor.

 

Bellagio and Varenna were very pretty little towns. Here are some pictures from Varenna.

These flowers were growing out of a vertical stone wall.

 

Some pretty roses at the train station.

Varenna had some beautiful doors.

 

In addition to pictures of doors, I like pictures of boats.

In Varenna, at first we couldn't find the train station. We looked up the hill and couldn't see any tracks. The people we asked for directions told us to follow the main road and we would be able to see it right above us. We finally found some people with bags, who we figured were coming from the station and they gave us directions. These pictures show why the location wasn't immediately obvious.

The left end of the platform:

And the right end of the platform.

The train came out from under the mountain only long enough to stop at the station.

That concludes the posts from our trip to Italy. We had a great time and pretty much lucked out with out itinerary, the weather, travel arrangements, etc. Too bad all trips can't go as well as this one did. We had a great time. If anyone is interested, I have about a thousand more photos (digital, of course) than I've put on these blogs.