Tam & Peg’s Excellent Adventure

Milan

We left our hotel in Paris at about 6 am and arrived at our train station early enough to get oriented and to shuffle around for a few tense moments in order to be at the right location for our train to Milan. The journey, which was a glorious 7-hour trip, took us across a portion of Switzerland (whose very serious officials came on board to check passports), through the Alps and into Italy. It was wonderful to see the countryside and the villages with old churches and beautiful castles along the way. Just like a storybook!
Our stay in Milan was very short, but Tom was able to secure very hard-to-get tickets for us to view the original, restored painting of “The Last Supper” by Leonardo da Vinci which is in a chapel at Santa Maria delle Grazie in central Milan, so we headed off for that right away. We were fortunate to have audio tours available and we enjoyed the tutorial which explained how this painting is different from many others which depict the same event. During WWII, the cathedral sustained substantial damage during bombings and for a period of time, the painting was actually exposed to the outdoors. Its most recent and thorough restoration was completed in the 1990’s.

For dinner, we walked about 5 blocks from our hotel to a very nice dinner in a restaurant recommended by the concierge. We were the only non-Italians in the establishment, but the staff worked with us and we enjoyed an Italian Salad Bar and two terrific pasta dishes – all for about the price of 2 small pots of French coffee.
We needed to leave for Venice rather early, but we made the time to take a taxi so that we could see Milan’s Duomo which is one of the largest Gothic Churches in the world. As is the case with everything we’ve seen so many photos of during our lives… seeing it in person is, literally, awesome.
We write this on our train journey from Milan to Venice. Our train car-mates are Carlo and Pamela, a delightful couple, who have shared insights and travel advice for Carlo’s home town, Venice, and who protected us from the old woman on crutches whose seats we were sitting in. We won.
More later.
We love and miss you all.