Holy Ground

ALERT: JACK CAME TO VISIT!

I went dark for the last week, so you haven't heard from me since two Fridays ago - I will make up for that today with some good updates! It was a crazy busy week, but a wonderful time.

Last Saturday morning (6/22), Jack got in at the Milan airport, so I woke up very early in my excitement and went to pick him up. Jack had his first ride on the metro and on a city bus - thank goodness for cool transit passes! Tourists don't usually get those, so I think we both felt very authentic in our explorations of the city. Our first stop was to drop off bags, but then we walked through the weekly market that happens right outside the apartment complex and went to lunch at a pasta place nearby. Jack started his Milanese Holiday with the classic spaghetti and meatballs and I opted for the carbonara with giant noodles.

After lunch, we headed to the Duomo for our self-guided tour of the outer terraces and the inner cathedral. We had to climb a bunch of stairs to get up there, but the view was super worth it, once we caught our breath enough get rid of the spots in our vision to see out over Milan... Our favorite parts included the copy/paste appearance of rows of identical architectural choices, the view that extended to the Alps and also to where we are living while here in Milan (indicated with a red arrow on the picture below), the "little dudes hanging out in the doorways" of the arches built into the church, and of course, just how tall everything is. What a huge church! Jack also loved walking down the spiral staircases, miming the act of drawing a sword so that he could prove that they built spirals in old castles so that the castle-dwellers could defend their homes. I really did consider buying him a sword so that the miming could be brought to life even more...

After the Duomo, we perused the Galleria next-door, full of high-fashion stores like Prada, Gucci, Armani, Swarovski, and many others. We took a picture with Prada for Anne but did not cave to her continued requests to buy the $5,000 light blue purse. We also wandered over to the Milan Lego Store, where we were much more tempted to spend money, but we couldn't figure out how to fit the Duomo Lego into my purse to smuggle it out since they don't sell a kit for it. What a shame!

We closed out the day with pizza and gelato, a classic duo of Italian cuisine. Jack declared from the beginning that his goal was to have gelato each day he was here (an admirable goal), so we fought to make that happen. Observe over the next few posts his choice of flavors... Stracciatella (vanilla ice cream with veins of chocolate and chocolate chunks) was the consistent winner - this is one reason I'm marrying him, haha!