Ciao Tutti

Hello all -

Sorry to take so long to blog again, we've been traveling around northern Italy for five days now and just returned to our peaceful hill town in Switzerland. I haven't appreciated the tranquility of our small ostello as much as I do now. I've very tired to say the least and also very excited to share my adventures with all of you. The towns we hit this long weekend were: Milano, Verona, Venice, and Vicenza.

Milano -
To sum up Milano - hot, humid, sweaty, and way too much walking. Don't get me wrong, Milano is a great city. However, the pace of the day combined with the humidity and a few complications made the day too long and painful to really appreciate the city. We saw an amazing old castle - Castello Sforzesco - which was partially designed by Leonardo Da Vinci during his stay in Milano. Then we went to Il Duomo. This Gothic cathedral seemed almost like a Gaudi, with ornamentation literally dripping from the building. Clad completely in white marble, it was really quite a sight. Inside wasn't as structurally elaborate as the other catherdals I've seen, like Wren's St. Paul or St. Eustache in Paris. However, Il Duomo di Milano was quite dramatic and theatrical, with elaborate alter frames and huge paintings and frescos of past cardinals and biblical stories. To me it weakened the space, but I'm sure it held quite an important teaching potential from the massive amount of images. Next to Il Duomo, we stepped into La Galleria - the first glass covered shopping plaza in history. The elaborate ironwork in the trusses combined with the early industrial ornamentation in the space made the place breath-taking. After seeing an exhibit about Leonardo, I got the chance to see one of his best known works - The Last Supper. House in a temperature controlled vaulted space, the painting lay on the far wall and seemed almost alive as the reverberation of the tourguide's voice covered the space in a blanket of noise. What a eerie experience - eerie in a good way though. Then to a bar for dinner. They have the coolest system in the Milano bars! For 8 euro, I got a beer and as much food as I'd like from the best Italian buffet ever. They had everything from bruccetta to paella, cut fruit to fried chicken and potatoes. What a meal! We ended up sitting aroung for hours, just chatting and enjoying the first breeze all day.
The tour de force of the Milano experience happened after dinner as we tried to find our hostel. We had gone along one of the small canals in town to watch the world cup game in a floating bar (in an old tug boat docked to the canal wall). Before we knew it, Ghana was up and we only had half an hour to get all the way across town to get to our hostel before the 11 o'clock curfew. We quickly booked it over to the nearest metro station and tried miseribly to find a tram that would take us into the northern part of town called Greco. After finally finding the tram stop and making our way up the tracks, it slowly dawned on us that the Greco wasn't the prettiest part of town and soon, became a little sketchy. At this point, our group was only 6 out of the 23, as everyone had split at different times to the osetllo. Our group had received directions from another classmate, however, the directions were lacking between when we got off the tram and when we arrived to the ostello. After walking about a mile in the wrong direction, we decided to stop and turn around. At this point, it was half past midnight and after starting at 7 in the morning we were all exhausted and walked out. Yet we pushed on, finally getting one of our groupmates to find a map on his blackberry. After taking a left, a right, another two lefts and a right, we wondered down the alley only to find our entire group sitting out in front of the ostello. Picture it - 23 Cal Poly students, completely covering the front door steps of this tucked away hostel in the bad part of town, sweaty, dirty, dying for a shower and a bed, and all ready to be done with Milano. It turns out, the people staying in the room we were assigned the night before had completely destroyed the place, leaving us without a place to stay. Luckily, the ostello owner had a brother who had a hotel on the other side of town that had enough room for all of us. So at 1 in the morning, all 23 of us made our way back to the tram to get back across town. With some classmates passed out in tram seat, others drinking cheap wine (which in Italy is DELICIOUS by the way) and saying they want to go home, and others of us too tired and sweaty to do either, we made are way to the other hotel. We finally got our rooms around 2 in the morning and luckily, this hotel was quite an upgrade - for only 11 euro! And they had a shower - never has a shower felt so good. Ever. Period. The next morning we were off to Verona and unfortunately (well actually forntunatly, but I'll talk about that next), since I was in the group without a pre-planned place to stay, I had to catch an 8:30 train to find a place to stay. But I was too tired to think of how early the next morning would start - it was time for bed.

Verona -
To be continued...