Milano

So I decided to go to Milan!

Have you Got Italian lives there and she offred me and Midwife Belgian a place to stay. She had ane xam which she took very seriously so had to study the whole time


Lets just say that me and Midwife Belgian are REALLY different. She HATES shopping. She HATES partying. She dislikes museams. She is tall and blonde and serious. She doesn't even like museams. But she still wanted to 'see things" So I asked her what kinda of things exaclty she wanted to do.

Apprantly she wanted to 'see things'

Yea...but...what kind of things?

She likes eating and seeing....buildings i guess???

So as soon as we got to Milan we had delicious Italian Pizza from the Pizzaria beside HUGI's flat and went to bed.


We bought our day metro pass, which I'm pretty sure we were over charged for. There was small market right outside her house so we went there for a bit. Then I lost the directions for the metro, or they were pickpocketed from my back pocket, but thanks to my brilliant Italian, we didn't even get lost without them. Seriously, I LOVE Italian now. it is such a nice language to listen to and wayyyy easier to understand then French. I could actually communicate in Italian with like...3 phrases. It was great. No one even realized I was forigen and all I knew how to say was: how much, Hello, Good bye, I don't speak Italian, (they knew I was foreign when I said that though) I serioulsy think 10 minuties of learning Italian was equal to 10 years of learning French.

The next morning we went to her university for 'festiviies' (it was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception) but all we saw was a Church.

It was a really nice Church though.

Traveling is just so much better when you can put things in context. Too often it's like..Oh...thats a nice church. yup. super.

But when you understand architecture, or history, or WHY that church was built that way and the significance of it..it is SO much better and so much more interesting.

Like when I saw this Church (Church of Ambrogio i think)I realized that the inscription on the tomb was of Ambrose. Then I remebred from Hums 2000 that St. Augustine in Confessions wrote about a preacher named Ambrose who basically inspired him to convert by his interpretations of the Bible. He was also the first person Augustine had seen read silently. And it turns out that was the same guy!

See..that was cool for me. Otherwise...pretty church..but...thats it.


Oh...and Yea, they have relics freakin relics...actually bones....in the basement. Does anyone else think this is freaky? That Catholicism is possible really freaky? to have bones of dead saints with jewels and luxurious clothing? Isn't that like..pagan..it sounds Pagan.

Then we had some lunch where I went to the grocery store and bought 8 euro worth of food for the week. I lived of bread and espresso.

I personally LOVE grocery stores. I find them one of the most fascinating parts of traveling. You can learn so much about a culture from their food. This grocery store had giant cakes in a box and really cool types of pasta.

Then we took the metro to the centre. There is this Giant Giant buliding called the Dumo. It took 500 years to build. It is covered with crazy statues. SOme of them are really gross! LIke one is a statue of a guy with his intestines coming out. Others depict biblical scenes. I really wish I knew more about the history of Christianity so I could figure out all the biblical scenes on the stained glass windows. Its full of popes and bishops and people in flowing robes. We weren't allowed to take pictures but I did anyways!

Then we went shopping. Or browsing. Armani...yum..
We also went to a castle, and through a bajillllion market stalls. Miwife HATED them because she hates crowds.

Milan is REALLY crowded. Ridiculously so.

There are tonnes of Gypsies all begging for money or selling hats or toys. It's so sad. There was one group and they were dressed up like American Indians. It was cool though. Full costume singing with these strange instruments.

Also the Mcdonalds in Italy has a "McCafe". I know it sounds weird...but Mcdonalds is a good example of the culture. They always change their menu slightly to reflect the culture. So here, they sold lattes and macchiatos. But I didn't get anything because I was on a food budget!!

All the more money for shopping....

So we wandered around the shops. There was this Aramani store where I got caught up reading "100 things you need to buy before you die". I only got to like page 3 though before the store closed. But now I really want to find that book! I don't want to die without buying those 100 things!