We ended up spending two days in Milan. We were staying a huge but very quiet camping ground on the outskirts of Milan near a suburb called Baggio. The camping ground obviously supports the aquatic park next door during summer. This place comes complete with shop, bar, pizzeria, petting zoo etc etc etc. All closed due to the fact it’s cold and foggy here right now!
The trip into Milan is surprisingly easy, but it does take a little time. The number 72 bus stops right outside the camping ground – but you cannot buy tickets from the driver. Tickets have to be purchased prior to travelling – in our case from the camping ground store. (That’s only open in the mornings).
The drivers of these buses look extremely bored – as they never have to actually interact with a passenger. Unless of course you disregard throwing the passengers around as they roar around corners. Most of the bus drivers here drive like the typical Italian – full speed, flat out, and with complete disregard to speed limits.
The bus winds it’s way around the area – travelling about twice as far as the direct distance to the metro station – then we transferred onto the Metro. This took us straight into the middle of Milan. We popped up to find ourselves standing right next to the Duomo – Milan’s cathedral. It’s the first church or cathedral that we’ve been charged an entry fee for – but at 2 Euro per person it was hardly expensive. This is an amazing building – they started construction in the 1300’s and only finished in 1965! I can’t imagine starting a building project that is expected to take 600 years – but they did.
The building is of course amazing – inside and out. Inside is covered in a wide variety of stone statues and carvings. The outside is decorated by no less than 135 spires! It’s even possible to adopt a spire – as they’re struggling to maintain this structure now it’s complete.
Our next stop was the castle – which has now been turned into a giant museum. The ceiling of one room was painted by Leonardo da Vinci – which I found rather under-whelming – but there you have it. It was painted to resemble the view you’d get in a forest if you looked up – a mixture of brown tree limbs and green leaves. Their other big drawcard is that they have the last sculpture that Michelangelo was working on prior to his death.
The following day we booked ourselves in to view The Last Supper. It’s now well protected by various physical and environmental measures – with limits on the number of tourists per hour who can see it, and air-locks either side of the room to control temperature & humidity.
It’s truly amazing that this has survived as well as it has thus far. The building that it’s in was badly damaged during WWII – and that was only the most recent indignity to befall it. Prior to that the room was used as a stable and as barracks during Napolean’s time – his soldiers “added” their mark to the painting too.
It must have been amazing when it was recently completed.
Yesterday we finished our visit to Milan by going to the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia “Leonardo da Vinci” – their Science & Technology museum. I have to say that it would be one of the best that I’ve ever seen anywhere in the world. They have a great mix of the modern and ancient. One entire room is devoted to a collection of models of things that da Vinci designed. It’s not clear how many of them were actually built – but the variety is amazing. From flying machines to dredges to scientific instruments to war machines.
They have a collection of steam locomotives in an adjoining shed. However the surprising items were in the room next door. They had a significant piece of the superstructure of an Italian cruise liner from the 50’s in the middle of this building. Once again who would think of (a) keeping this when demolishing the rest of a ship, (b) moving it into the city, and (c) making it a feature exhibit in a museum like this?
The weather in Milan has turned cold – the fog has moved in, and we’ve decided that we’ve seen enough – so we’ve moved on to Venice – or close to Venice anyway. We’re staying in a small but nice campground across the lagoon. Actually getting here lead to another battle of wills with Ms Sat-nav. This time she told us that there was no route to our destination that did not involve a ferry. A quick check with google maps revealed that this was not the case. So we laid in a course that took us across the north of Italy close to a town/city called Jesolo. Then we were able to re-program her to take us to our destination at the southern tip of the peninsula that forms the northern side of the lagoon. This time she happily agreed to take us there with no further arguments! I can only assume that we exceeded her maximum limits for an acceptable detour.
We’ll see if we can figure out the water-buses tomorrow and we’ll make our way into Venice. We decided that staying here would be more fun than staying on the inland side of Venice and using boring old buses or trains.
Brian
