TRINITY ACRES: 2018 Italy Day 4 - Milan

February 25, 2018

2018 Italy Day 4 - Milan - Ash Wednesday

Remember man that thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return.

Since it was Ash Wednesday we had to fast and not eat meat. So for breakfast I had bread, water and tea for breakfast. It's very difficult to fast while traveling as there are many tastes to taste, but I had to forego on this day. The Pistachio gelato Eda was excited for me to try was going to have to wait another day! Life here is much slower paced than we Americans are accustomed to. Meals are much longer with alot more talking (conversation is a good thing!). I was so exhausted the first night I fell asleep during the talking... oops... So yesterday I opted to take a nap at 5:30 lest I fall asleep during dinner. My Italian was terrible when I first arrived, I could not think of a single thing after studying it. However as time went on I recalled certain words but spoke very badly.

Eda and I were headed to Milan for the day... naturally the first stop was to get a "caffe". I would drink tea sometimes when we stopped.

We took the train into Milan, here is the Milan train station. I think it ended up taking us a total of 2 hours to get there with all the waiting for buses, trains, coffee and walking!

The Duomo (Cathedral) of Milan was a sight to see! The outside was amazing with marble and some thousand statues and gargoyles (rain spouts!) Italian army men searched our bags and run a metal detector over you, front and back. Security in Italy has gone way up since our last visit.

Inside (finally after getting tickets and standing in line for a while) had 52 pillars the size of redwood trees for the 52 weeks of the year. So yes, this place is huge.

This pulpit looked a bit like a space ship.

Loved this bizarre statue of St. Bartholomew. His skin is hanging over his shoulders like a cape. In case you wondered what a flayed alive man might look like!

We went down to the tomb of St. Charles Borromeo.

St. Charles, pray for us!

I believe these are tombs of his family. Unfortunately our tickets didn't cover the archaeological dig, that would have been neat to see! Yes, you need tickets to get in here. It cost money to visit a church. The archaeological dig contained the baptistery St. Ambrose had built and where he baptized St. Augustine! It has a very interesting history and build.

Close up of the space ship pulpit.

Here is the current baptistery shaped like a bath tub.

For lunch I had this sandwich. Yum! We also had coffee/tea. I had to laugh at the place we stopped for tea. There were marble floors leading to a toilette without a seat you had to pay to use! :D

Then we walked a round a while. There were army men with guns... large guns... very large guns... walking the streets

Then visited the Sforza Castello

Ducks!

I'm not sure who these is suppose to be but I'm going to guess St. Ambrose since he was bishop in this city. It was a bishop I believe, judging by the mitre.

Inside the courtyard

I suppose this would have been a moat. Unfortunately Eda doesn't speak much English and I don't speak much Italian so we weren't able to communicate very well. I could have asked a million questions! Ah well, a friendly silence is nice, too.

My only disappointment is that we ran out of time and I didn't get to see St. Ambrose. So here is a snitched picture!

This is the church he had built (I think)

Here is his body.

And this is the baptistery he had built, which is under the Duomo.

There is some crazy bizarre story about Bergamo that I learned about when I passed this building.

On the way home we stopped at the Lidl grocery store. (video below)

These toy balls filled with something were the size of baseballs.

After I had a little bit of a nap, we went out for seafood (since we couldn't eat meat) at an Italian restuarant. A white wine and crunchy bread sticks in packages and bread. Naturally.