Milan to Venice

Yesterday, I hopped the train from Milan to Venice, which is probably the most beautiful city I have ever seen in my life. Also, perhaps the most crowded. I've taken a million pictures which I am itching to post, but my camera and the hotel wifi system refuse to cooperate. On top of that, my wireless keyboard appears to have freaked out, which means that I am typing on my iPad screen, which is incredibly slow and prone to mistakes. Sadness! I think I will have a new one airlifted from America on Sunday, when my BFF Janet joins me for a week. Until then, the posts will have to be short and sweet.

So, here goes. Milan: meh. It was fine, and I can see that it must be Mecca for those who adore fashion and design. For me and everyone else, it is more or less indistinguishable from Brussels. It doesn't feel Italian at all, especially now that it is August and all the Italians have fled for the beach. I had heard that Italian cities basically shut down for the month of August, and I had expected it to be slow, but I didn't count on that as literal truth. But here it is, August, and most of the country is, in fact, shut down. On Saturday I ate goat curry for lunch and sushi for dinner because the only restaurants open in Milan were run by the immigrant community! :) Friday night was sushi too, in fact. No complaints from me as far as food goes--I like variety. It is shockingly hard to find anyplace open to sell me a phone card or a bottle of shampoo, though. And the streets in downtown Milan were eerily empty. I half-expected a giant tumbleweed to roll down the street on Saturday while I was out and about.

I didn't actually see a tumbleweed, but I did visit the Duomo in Milan, and it was spectacular. I posted a handful of pics of Milan earlier, and the Duomo is the white church with all the spires and columns. Inside are the greatest Gothic stained glass windows in the world. I tried taking some camera phone pics, but of course they would never do justice to something so grand and intricate, but I am sure there are good pictures if you search the internet. The church has three large panels of stained glass windows, which are each composed of many small windows--more than 400 in all. Apparently only about 60 of them are original, and the rest are from the 1800s and 1900s. They are gorgeous. The crucifix apparently contains one of the nails from Jesus' cross, though the crucifix is only brought down to eye level so it is visible a few times a year.

I also took time to go to Milan's archaeological museum, which was okay but not fantastic. So many of the explanatory panels were only in Italian that I feel like I missed out on a lot. But the items on display were interesting: pottery, weapons, fragments of sculpture, coins, skeletal remains from the Greek, Etruscan, Roman, and medieval times. And the museum is built on the site of the Roman city wall, with a very well preserved tower incorporated into the museum facility.

Milan was okay but it wasn't really exciting me too much, so yesterday I took the train to Venice. The crowds here are ferocious at times, but it isn't too hard to get away from them because most people stick close to a handful of major attractions and don't venture off the path. But the little side streets and alleys are where the principal charm of Venice resides, at least in my opinion. All of the structures are at least a couple of hundred years old, with stucco and brick and wrought iron touches. I saw lots of great ornamentation on the buildings, and the streets are so narrow that the sun creates great shadow angles and spotlights all day long.

As pretty much everybody knows, the city of Venice is formed by a group of islands connected by footbridges and gondolas and water taxis. From about 1100 to 1500, it was the wealthiest city in the entire world, with its merchants controlling trade in every direction. There are magnificent churches and palaces and public spaces everywhere. But over time, particularly after the discovery of North America, its fortunes waned and the city sank downhill over the next few centuries. There are pedestrian streets but no cars, so the best way to see the place is just to walk and walk and walk, which is exactly what I did yesterday afternoon and evening and all day today. I took so, so many pictures, too. I can't wait to post some of them.

Typing on my iPad is driving me crazy, so I am going to sign off for the night, but I will write more tomorrow from.... well, wherever it is that I land after leaving Venice tomorrow. :) Ciao!