Milano, not Milan

First off, I have decided that for now on I am going to start refering to place names by their name in the native tongue. This is not because I want to seem faux sophisticated, it just seems unneccesarily complicated and dumb to have an extra set of names for every place. It would be like if I insisted that everyone over here call me 'Pierre'. See? Duh? I can't fathom why the French call London, Londres and why Germans call, Geneve, Genf and why we Anglos call Roma, Rome.... so I didn't visit Milan a few weeks back. I visited Milano.

I have been really busy recently and have had no time to update things properly, so I will just unload some Milan(o) pictures and leave it at that.

Nicola and I took the train to Milan, up into the mtns of the Rhone valley, under the mtns and into the North Italian lake country. Didn't get to see much on the way there as it was dark, but the ride back was magnificent. Our hotel was nice, but crazy enough didn't have an iron for all my crammed clothes. Irons are illegal in hotels in Italy. Go figure. Write this down for the future.

The next day was a whistle stop of tour of Milan. It was a bit of a funny place I thought and not nearly as cosmopolitan fealing as I expected. It is, after all, one of the fashion capitals of the world. We toured all the main tourist sites. Below is a shot of the 'Duomo' which is a magnificent spiraled cathedral. The stonework is amazingly intricate and detailed. One could climb to the top, which is a must do (In general in europe I have found that the 2 euro that most cathedrals charge for a walk to the top is a highlight and the best value of any touristic thing to do)

Below is a shot of the cathedral where Da Vinci's last summer is. We didn't get in to see the painting, but the cathedral grounds are nice.

Here is a shot of the walk up from the Piazza Duomo towards the old Castle Sforza. This was my first real defensible castle and I was pretty excited. I had been to many palace's before, but this was the first structure that was meant to be defensible as such. It was pretty interesting to see all the battlements etc.

More of the castle. Check out the arrow holes. There were countless of these

Nicola wanted to check out the La Scala opera house. The inside is this below classic scene, but we both agreed the museum was a bit of a dissapointment

Anyway, then we had a lovely dinner at a local trattoria recomended by my 'Lonely Planet' guide book. Feeling like we had 'done' most of the major sites in Milan in one day, we decided to set off for Bergamo the next day. It was the closest next big nice town. It is situated right at the foot of the Bergamo Alps and the old town is an ancient old walled city. Of course I made Nicola walk to the top.

A view from the top looking out onto the Lombard plain.

We had lunch and some local polenta based desserts and then it was back to Milano for dinner at a restaurant recomended to me by Andrea Damascelli. Good food and cheap.

The next morning was back on the train for a trip home... but not before we had a good look at the countryside in around Lago Maggiore, which is one of the beautiful lakes north of Milan (Como is the more famous one).

This is pretty close to the view from the train. Amazing eh?

A great weekend all in all. I really would like to explore more of Italy.