On the Way Home

We stayed awake all the way home, watched four movies, and drank a bunch of wine. We were sad to have our great trip come to an end, but on the other hand, we were happy to get home and sleep in our own bed!

Milan

The train station pictures are in Milan. The high-arched ceiling was also inside the train station and the pillared building with the flying horses on it was the outside of the train station.

Our hotel in Milan was the Ibis. It was a fine hotel, but it was like any very large hotel with small rooms—it did the job, but had none of the charm of our hotels in Rome, Florence, and Venice.

We only had one full day in Milan, and we planned to see da Vinci's Last Supper and the da Vinci museum. We were not, however, able to get tickets to the Last Supper. So we set out to walk a few miles to the museum. Along the way, we happened upon the Sforza Castle, which we didn't even know about. we turned onto a street and saw the castle rising up at the end of the street. The castle was quite charming, and turned out to be a perfect place for our picnic lunch. After spending an hour at the castle, we resumed our walk to the da Vinci museum. Part of the museum was devoted to da Vinci's works, but much of it covered other technical developments, such as airplanes, trains, and ships.

After we left the museum, we went to the Santa Maria Delle Grazie church, which is next door to the building where Leonardo da Vinci painted the Last Supper. Even though we could not go in to view the painting, it was awesome knowing we were walking around where Leonardo had walked.

On the way back to our hotel, we happened upon another amazing site in Milan, the Milan Duomo—which is actually very close to the castle. This time, we knew it existed since Leonardo da Vinci helped design it an we had seen a model of it in the museum. We also saw the Vittorio Arch, which was right by the church.

The guy in white was a street perfomer and the car in a dress was in a store window. Even though we went to Milan only as a means of getting a non-stop flight to the U.S. and did not view the city as a tourist site, the area near the castle and the Duomo was the most crowded area we encountered on our entire trip. It was the only area that was so crowded that people were bumping into us.

When we returned to our hotel, we had happy hour in the hotel lounge. The next morning, we were at the airport early and had breakfast in the First Class lounge. Even though we hadn't seen any mountains by Milan, there was a great view of one out the lounge window.