Milan & Lake Como

On our long trip through Italy at the beginning of the summer, we had to pass on one of the major cities, Milan. It is in the northwest part of the country and was a bit out of our way. Also, we'd heard that it wasn't the best place to visit anyway. We had heard, however, that it was near the Italian lake district, which was supposed to be amazing, and Jenna really wanted to go. So, we ended up planning a trip for the beginning of September, the first weekend after the "end of the busy summer travel" to try and cut back on the number of annoying tourists we'd have to deal with.

Friday, September 4th

We arrived in Milan at around 10am, but due to the distance of the airport to the city, and some issues figuring out the logistics for getting around, we pretty much had to head straight out to a 1:30 appointment (after grabbing pizza of course!). We had tickets to see The Last Supper, which is in a church away from the main part of the city.

The Last Supper is a fresco painting (if you've been reading, paint mixed into the plaster of a wall/ceiling), and was done by the leader of the Ninja Turtles - Leonardo. They only allow a few people in at a time, and you have to get your reservations several months in advance. It is gigantic and very impressive. We've seen recreations and photos before, but the real deal is something else. There are no photos allowed, but we snuck this one, which actually turned out really well.

Leonardo had used an experimental technique, which caused the painting to start to deteriorate within a few years. Now, several hundreds of years later, it is actually in pretty bad shape, as a lot of the colors are fading or parts seem to be breaking away. Andrew's (far right)face is pretty much gone. There were hints, though, of its former glory, where you could see what the colors had looked like, and we stood in awe for about 20 minutes imagining how it would have looked then.

This alone really made the trip to Milan worth while. After we left, though, we headed to the center of town for the icing on the cake.

That is a picture of the Duomo, Milan's cathedral, which is one of the largest in Europe. We walked around the square a little and took in this church, which was really impressive. It was built completely out of pink marble from a nearby quarry, and has literally thousands of statues, both inside and out. Each of those little spires that you see in the picture has a unique statue on top, plus then there are more scattered all over.

They built the Duomo with politics in mind. They spent a ton of money to make it really big in order to make Rome (to the south) happy. Apparently the Catholic church showed a little more love to those who were willing to show their devotion by opening their pocket books. In order to get some support from the Germans and Austrians to the north, though, they shunned the "popular" Italian architecture of the time, like that used at the Vatican, and instead went with a Gothic theme, which was more popular in northern Europe.

After spending some time learning all of this and taking in the main square, we headed through the Galleria, a small, very upscale shopping area, to the Teatro alla Scala, which is Milan's opera house. From the outside, it isn't much to talk about, but the inside is incredible - one of the most elaborate buildings we've seen that wasn't a palace. This is probably the most famous opera house in the world, and most major operas throughout history have played here. They had a little museum with original scripts, playbills, costumes, and some other interesting random things like letters written by a young Mozart. I'm sure this would have been really interesting to opera fans, but what made us love it was that we got to see them practice. They have a couple of the luxury boxes open for tour, so that you can see down into the actual hall, which was amazing. The picture below is from the website, through, as they were rehearsing for a performance when we visited. We got to watch for about 10 minutes before they kicked us out, and it was really interesting. Made us want to go see an opera!!

After the opera, we headed back through the Galleria enjoying an excellent Gelato, and decided to tour the Duomo. We started with the roof, which was originally built to have people go up there - with stairs leading all the way to the top and several little spots to stop and sit and take in the art that they've put all over the building. Luckily, they've recently also installed an elevator that takes you most of the way up!! By the time we got up there, it was sunny and warm and we really enjoyed just being on top of the world.

We also went on a walk through the inside of the church, which aside from being full of hundreds of more statues, was not much different from the standard European cathedral.

After leaving, we headed back to the train station to make our way to Varenna, a small town on Lake Como, which is where we spent the rest of the weekend. After about an hour on the train we got to our hotel at about 9:00. We were pretty hungry and decided to eat in the hotel restaurant, which was on a nice patio. It was dark so we didn't get any view, but the food was really good...just one more reason to love Italy!

Saturday, September 5th

So this is what we woke up to.

Amazing.

This is Lake Como - in the Italian Alps just across the border from Switzerland. There are a few other lakes near by that make up the Italian Lake District, but this is supposed to be the best and most accessible. It is also the home of George Clooney when he's not working in LA. He was actually there while we were, but we didn't see him - guess we don't hang out in the same type of places.

We didn't do too much. As our friend Rick Steves says - this is a place to lower your heart rate. We had a walk through the town of Varenna, which was very nice. We stopped in the small grocery store and picked up some fruit and sundry picnic goods and headed to the town's "beach". Basically, one of the bar/restaurants in town had a big patio area next to the lake, and decided the best use would be to cover it in gravelly sand and rent out beach chairs. It doesn't really have access to the water, but since the lake is fed by the Alps, it is freezing water anyway, so that was not a huge problem. The sun was shining, though, and that was enough for Jenna, so we spent most of the afternoon there.

By mid-afternoon, we were really starting to regret the fact that we forgot our sunscreen, so to prevent further baking, we decided to go back to the hotel for the afternoon. They were supposed to have a nice patio with some umbrellas and we thought it would be nice to sit out and read. Boy were we in for a nice surprise. The hotel (Eremo Gaudio, if you're planning a trip), was at one point a monastery up on the side of the mountain. The reception and about 1/2 the rooms (including ours) sit below the original monastery nearer to the lake. A short funicular ride up the mountain takes you to the actual monastery, though, where the other rooms are. This is where the amazing rooftop patio was, and we literally could not believe it. The commanding view from up here was spectacular, and the building itself was just amazing. What a spot for the monks to come for worship. It is no surprise that they picked this place. As we stood up there and took in the majesty of the lake and mountains and everything else, all we could do was thank God for the beauty of His creation, and the many blessings He's given us that allow us to enjoy them!!

After a quick clean-up in the hotel, we headed off to dinner at a small local place with nice patio seating. Again, we enjoyed some great Italian food. While waiting for my calzone to cook, we saw a feat of feats. The guy next to us ate an enormous calzone (literally 12 inches across). This alone had me so stuffed I could barely walk out of the place. For dessert, though, he went ahead and ate a full pizza. The crust is pretty thin, but still, it was the same size of a US medium, and he downed it all like a champ. He wasn't overweight or anything - just a normal middle aged guy who ate in one sitting what could easily fed both Jenna and I for 4 meals. Needless to say, we were both extremely impressed!

After dinner we had a nice stroll through the town trying to find a suggested place for dessert. We never did end up finding the place, but it was okay because the town and lake were nice in the evening, and we probably didn't really need the dessert anyway.

Sunday, September 6th

Sunday was another day spent on the lake, and again, we didn't do too much (which was perfect). Our plan was to spend the day on one of the lake's main towns - Bellagio. We caught a mid-morning ferry the mile or so across the water to this town. It is quite a bit bigger than where we stayed, and has a lot more shops and tourists. It was a Sunday morning, so a lot of stuff was closed, but we still enjoyed walking through the town and peeking in the windows. Later in the afternoon some of the shops did open up and we were able to stop in and see lots of stuff we wished we could afford to buy. Many mental notes made of things to purchase when we return some day.

We headed through the town and out to a small park on the lake. We hung out in the park for a while and enjoyed the beautiful weather and scenery. We then went and had another great lunch at a restaurant near the park with great water views.

As we had to get back to Milan for our flight, and the trains don't run too often on Sundays, we had to leave Bellagio fairly early. We spent a little more time in the park before we headed back, though, and just had a really relaxing time there.

After a ferry back to Varenna and a goodbye to our hotel (we had to grab the luggage), we headed off for a 4:00 train to Milan. Fortunately, this gave us just enough time to make it back to the city center for a few final views and pictures of the Duomo, and what sadly may have been our last Italian gelato for a while.

This ended up being a wonderful trip. We really did almost nothing, but it was so enjoyable to just take in the amazing scenery and relax - something that we hear some people do when they go on vacation.