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.

Verona

We spent only part of a day and one night in Verona. It was kind of an afterthought because we didn't want to travel all the way from Venice to Milan in one day and because Susan's aunt and uncle lived there during the 1950s (they loved their stay there). We would happily have spent another day or two there. It was the most relaxing town we visited--a perfect place to unwind from the frenetic pace of Venice. There aren't a lot of "must see" sights there, but as you'll see from the photographs, it's one of the most beautiful cities in northern Italy.

The most famous sight in Verona (not counting faux Romeo and Juliet sites) is the Coliseum. It is the third largest that the Romans built and is by far the best preserved. They still hold performances there in the summer time. They were setting up for Aida when we were there, but there was no show that night. Concerts are supposed to be spectacular with acoustics created by some happy accident about 2000 years ago. It was hard to get a shot because of the market day set up around the Coliseum, but here's a shot of some arches I liked.

This is the market. It made my mouth water. The meat and cheese on sale here was the best we saw anywhere in Italy. We came back in the evening and had dinner from one of the food stalls--a grilled onion and proscuitto crudo pannini.

There were literally dozens of beautiful street scenes like these.

The other big attraction in Verona is the Scaligeri Castle. This bunch was a fairly ruthless ruling family in power for more than a century. They had the quaint habit of succession by murder. Fortunately for them, they had big families. The castle itself is quite pretty and sits on the bank of the Adige River. Here are some shots of the frescoes archeologists have uncovered inside the castle and a shot of the town and river from the ramparts.

And there were doors in Verona

On our way to the main piazza to have lunch, we happened on a very pretty little church. Here's a shot of the interior.

The buildings around the main piazza.

The duomo, while pretty plain from the outside (another unfinished Italian church) was beautiful inside.

The ceiling with detail.

The organ loft.

And the floor.

There was a museum of archeology across the river, so we went to take a look. It turned out that the museum was about 100 feet above the level of the entrance. Susan decided to take a break while I went to see the museum. It turned out there was an elevator, so I really didn't have to walk very far. Here's a picture from the museum, looking down on the amphitheater. You can see Susan sitting in the shade in the middle of the frame. A pretty long ways down.

This is a picture of the town looking back across the river from the museum's terrace.

Verona was a very relaxing stop. It would have been nice to catch our breath there for a day or so more, but we were on the final leg of our journey.

Next up: Milan and Lake Como.

Venice

When we planned our trip, I was ambivalent about visiting Venice. I think if I hadn't been reading a series of novels about 15th century Venice I might have said "let's skip it." Boy, would that have been a mistake! We liked Florence and surroundings very much and Bologna lived up to expectations as well, but Venice was the highlight of the trip for me. I had heard how dirty and unpleasant it was (Susan didn't like it much at all the first time she visited). We were surprised at how clean it was without noxious smells from the canals. It was very impressive.

Venice is not the easiest city to get around in. Many streets are not identified and the network of canals makes it difficult to go directly between two points. (originally there were no streets at all. Travel was entirely by boat.) A good map is essential. That was our first purchase and I'm pleased to say that Susan navigated us around the city without incident. Venice was crowded at times and at times there seemed to be no one around--it was very weird. Here's a street scene just around the corner from our hotel.

This is one of the larger secondary canals that branch off from the Grand Canal, which is the main street of Venice.

These are smaller canals and you can see that they are multi purpose.

 

There are streets and many of them look like this. No people this time.

 

There were flowers everywhere, mostly in window boxes like this one.

This is the Grand Canal from the Rialto Bridge. This is about as narrow as it gets.

Our first view of St. Mark's. You can discern a distinct oriental look to the cathedral. This is due to the close ties between Venice and the Byzantine Empire. The third picture is of some of the detail over one of the doors. This, like much of the art in Venice, is all mosaic (and that is real gold leaf).

 

The Doge's Palace sits right nest to St. Mark's. This gives you some idea of the detail in the construction.

The clock tower sits in the middle of St. Mark's Square. This is not the original. It fell down one night. Miraculously no one was injured but a cat. The tower was rebuilt to the original specifications. Hmmm...does that mean it's going to fall down again?

The Rialto Bridge. Like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence it is covered with shops.

While we were waiting for our vapporetto (a water bus), a procession of boats came by. They ranged from single rowers to a very large boat with a couple of dozen rowers. Here's a sample of the boats you can see on the Grand Canal. We were told that you could always tell Venetians from tourists--Venetians never sit down in a boat.

  

Here's that woman again. Is she following me?

This is the gondola we rode in. Before we got to Venice we read that one had to ride in a gondola or miss a unique experience. Once I heard that they cost 80 euros for a half hour--per person--a gondola ride sounded too unique for me. However, we hooked up with the same tour company that we used in Florence and the tour included a gondola ride. If you are ever in Venice, that's the way to do it. The company provides fabulous tours at very reasonable rates. We got a half hour gondola ride, a walking tour of Venice, a tour of St. Mark's, a tour of the Doge's Palace and a tour of the Grand Canal (four separate tours, actually) for a very reasonable price. It took all of one afternoon.

I've mentioned before how crooked everything is in Italy. Here's another example. See the tower in the background? That's typical. It's often hard to figure out how to hold the camera. Looking through the lens there's always a tendency to try to straighten things up. The key thing to know about Venice is that all the buildings (and all the streets) are built on tree trunks pounded into the soil below the lagoon.  One church we saw (it was massive) allegedly was supported by a million tree trunks. I have no idea how many are under St. Mark's. Hardly anything is level in the whole place.

Venice is known for its glass works. Here's shot I took of a shop window along our tour.

Venice is also famous for its dress and masquerade balls. The key to the ball is the variety of masks worn. Here are some examples. The masks were not meant so much as disguises, but to allow famous and or notorious people the fiction that they were not recognized.

We really liked Venice. I'm glad we didn't leave it off the itinerary.

Next up: Verona, Milan and Lake Como.