Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Fun times in Italy

A week after jetting our family to Germany for some Christmas fun in the Bavarian capital, Eryka and I took advantage of a visit from Grandma Gail to make a trip for just the two of us to Milan, Italy. We figured we couldn't pass up the chance since we found tickets for 30 euro roundtrip per person! Getting there was the cheap part, then the spending began.

Well, sort of. We didn't do any high fashion spending, which Milan is famous for, of course. But we did do some fine dining. We ate very well during our two days in Milan: pizza, calzone, pumpkin ravioli, panzerotti, polenta with wild mushrooms and truffles, pizza, roasted lamp, beef cutlets with artichoke, panini, pizza, italian meatballs, chocolate pear cake, more pizza. OK, I'm kidding about the pizza, but we did have one or two pizzas. Everything was very delicious. It made us wonder why we're living in Spain and not in Italy. Maybe because my firm doesn't have an office there. Oh, and I don't speak Italian.

In addition to all the wonderful food, we were able to go to church in Milan. We were lucky we accidentally took the long way there because we got to pass through a great flea market set up along a canal. It was perfect. Church was great, the missionaries even had the little radio receivers for us to get translation into english, though the little box kept cutting out so I couldn't really understand much even with the translation. However, Italian is similar to Spanish and Portuguese, so it wasn't too bad. I thought the ward was quite strong, though it appeared that, much like our ward here in Spain, much of the membership was made up of South American immigrants.

We loved our visit to the Last Supper. It is truly an astonishing work of art, and I don't think I could sufficiently describe it here, so I won't try. We also paid a visit to the Duomo, the world's largest gothic cathedral. This building is truly amazing. We went up to the roof Monday morning and were able to get even closer to the detail. All the carvings are so intricate and the spires appear so delicate, it's amazing to think how it was completed hundreds of years ago. Well, they did take their time getting it finished. I think it was worth the effort.

We also saw some great works of art at the Pinocoteca Brera, we paid a visit to a big castle in downtown Milan (I'm not sure exactly of the name, it was just called "Castello").

We passed through the Gallerie, one of the world's first "shopping malls", and we walked down the streets where the high fashion shops are located, feeling entirely too uncomfortable to even consider stepping inside any of the stores.

Sorry we don't have any pictures to share. We're still (yes, still) waiting on internet installation at home. We'll post some of the great pictures of our Italy visit once we have high speed at home.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am sure Italy was wonderful. I have heard they have great food, glad you were able to feast on some good food. Can't wait to see the pictures.

Grandma Karen