Milan - what to do besides shopping

Milan is not much of a destination city, unless your idea of a vacation is buying an oversized $300 leather handbag or hanging out in Fascist inspired train stations. But Milan is not a bad stop on the way in or out of Italy, if only for a day or so.



Milan is the home to Leonardo's Last Supper, a beautiful and complicated work that can't really be appreciated except in person. Forget Dan Brown, Leonardo had some significant ideas and symbols going in this work, even if he painted it using an atrocious technique which has always endangered its existence.



Milan's other great draws include the massive marble Duomo (cathedral), Gallerie Vittorio Emauele (a massive ornate shopping centre with Prada AND McDonalds), and the Sforza Castle.

As with all of our stops in Italy this summer, we walked the entire city, aside from a single metro ride. Our accomodations at the very Italian sounding Windsor Hotel were four star and breakfast was awesome (even the warm tuna and beans!). The only low point was trying to figure out the Italian train system and our Eurorail passes -this little adventure cost us a couple of hours at the somewhat scary Milan central train station. More to follow...




Sforza Castle