Well we had planned to stay near Milan in Lake Como, but found at this stage of the game it was more trouble than it was worth. It is a little out of the way from Milan and would’ve made our next leg far more difficult than we anticipated. We thought it would be a fairly straight journey from Milan to Lyon without too much difficulty. Although as we started to probe into trains and travel found there weren’t too many options, and with the added extension to Lake Como would make the day just too long. So we decided to stay in the prosperous Italian design and fashion capital of Milan.
With this now set we really just needed some R&R time, so we pretty much slept the day away apart from popping out to get some pizzas and wine. Hard life huh?
Day two saw some more walking, as if we hadn’t done enough already. I had worked out by the end of the trip we would’ve clocked up close to 9000Kms of distance traveled. I dare not guess how many more were trouncing around town on foot.
In our research we found another interesting church similar to the Capuchin monks of Rome and thought we’d take a looksy. San Bernardino alle Ossa is a church in Milan, best known for its ossuary, a small side chapel decorated with numerous human skulls and bones.
The church’s origins date to 1145, when a hospital and a cemetery were built in front of the basilica of Santo Stefano Maggiore. In 1210, when an adjacent cemetery ran out of space, a chamber was built to house bones from the cemetery, next to which a church was built in 1269. It was restored for the first time in 1679 by Giovanni Andrea Biffi , who modified the facade and decorated the walls of the ossuary with human skulls and tibiae.
Next we strolled down the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a vast undercover shopping precinct with glamorous stores adorning the walls. Halfway down the Vittorio Emanuele Galleria are four floor mosaics representing Turin (the bull), Rome (the she-wolf and Romulus and Remus), Florence (the lily) and Milan (a red cross on a white background). Out of these four mosaics, the most famous is the one of the bull due to a Milanese tradition that is saying that if you turn quickly 3 times on your heel over the bull’s testicles you attract good luck.
Just next to the Galleria is the Milan Cathedral (Duomo di Milano), the fourth largest catherdral in the world. Probably the most outstanding feature of this cathedral are the thousands of spires that adorn it. The roof is also open to tourists (which we didnt get up to), allows a close-up view of some of the spectacular sculptures that would otherwise be unappreciated. The roof of the cathedral is renowned for the forest of openwork pinnacles and spires, set upon delicate flying buttresses.
We swung by the Castle of Sforza and sat under a poplar tree which was is flower. There are hundreds of these trees around town, leading to thousands of flying cotton whisps absolutely everywhere, it almost appeared as if it was snowing(but it was very hot). We actually watched many of them gather together on the tiles at the train station the next day waiting for our train. As they rolled around they grew like snowballs but lighter than air. They did make our noses twitch a little though.
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