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W E L C O M E T O
T O R T I L L A B A Y . C O M
T
H E W E B S I T E O F
A L B E R T O
V A Z Q U E Z A N D C R A I G
A Y L I F F E
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The Famous
Vittorio Emanuel Galleria, Milan
2006 |
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N O R T H E R N
I T A L Y B L O G
M I L A N
...A Little
Song, A Little Dance, A Little Seltzer Down the Pants.....
We have arrived in Milan. Not really happy campers, are we.
....
The Last Supper is booked up until
star date 4106. Our hotel is miles and miles from Milan in a town called Gerenzano. We
leave the hideously fascist (architecture designed by Mussolini)
Milano Centrale Train Termini and see nothing but gypsies and surly,
solitary, scowling, non-italian immigranti thieves lurking and loitering in the dusty
smoggy midday sun on a deserted plaza outside the front steps. Where are
we? We run back inside and we stop to buy our tickets for Florence.
There are 300,000 people waiting to buy tickets and only one
window is open. It's lunchtime in Italy.
( Nevertheless, always get the
departing tickets/next leg of your journey in place
after arriving at the
train station). While we are waiting in line, we see a group of handsome
Carbinieri (italian policemen in Armani-designed uniforms) stop and arrest a group of thieves
who just robbed and beat a young man. Yikes....
We finally get our tickets for Florence,
leaving in two days and I quickly ask an official
looking woman for directions. Gerenzano is a
€80.00 taxi ride to the
suburbs. I ask for metro train directions. Mind you, we have not eaten, it's 2
o'clock, (Italians practice the "siesta" and everything is closed until
4 p.m.) my mom is in terrible hip pain from bursitis and a swollen
mouth, and occasionally she lets out a roar of pain. We are four people
in distress.
The officer says, "Go
downstairs and take the subway
4 stops. Get out and walk underground to the suburban train station.
Wait for the train to Saronno. Get off at Saronno and take a taxi to the
hotel."
Oh Lordy......
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Interior,
Milan Terminal 2006 |
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Milan Train Terminal 2006 |
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Milan Train Terminal 2006 |
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Close-up of the roof
cap, Milan Train Terminal 2006
Fountain, Milan Train Terminal
2006
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-CONTINUED-
Two hours later we check into a
somewhat shabby hotel in a suburb of Milan. The sky is thick and yellow.
It looked like a hotel made for pharmaceutical or machine parts
salespeople out on the road and other dusty tired businessmen and
businesswomen.
The hallways were insane asylum green. The rooms were drab and smelled like carpet shampoo. Our
room looked out over a chain link
lined playground. The air was stale. Internet was broken. The hotel made
a mistake. Our room had twin beds, Mom and Vicki had a double, so we
switched. Mom tells me unhappily, there is no CNN. Only Italian programming.
Satellite must be down, too. Sigh.
Alberto and I really prefer small
pensiones or affita cameres, apartments where we can shop
locally and cook. Preferably, no TV. But we are really glad to be with
Vicki and Mom for a short time and their preference for comfortable
full-service American-style hotels is understandable. It's very late now
and we must eat and that will be all we do.
There is no more of Milan
today.
We walk to a dining spot
recommended to us by the clerk, a youngish man wearing a terrible
rockabilly hairpiece it's a long walk along a very busy dark narrow highway.
The
restaurant serves novelle italian cuisine and it's very
good. Heavy on fish and wine selections. Mom and Vicki don't like fish.
Vicki doesn't like wine. Yikes, again. It's Italy! The home of Scampi
and Pinot Grigio, of frutti de mare and Chianti
and Nebbiolo.
I take the 4 complimentary
aperitifs of Prosecco frizzante and gulp them all down.
The food is very, very good. The service is attentive but invisible,
just the way I like it. They have pasta and salad. I have risotto
milanese with funghi
porcini. Dessert is delicious, a tiramisu. They bring us
complimentary lemoncello. I drink Vicki's too. We go home to bed.
The
next morning, breakfast is great. A huge buffet and an army of friendly service people pour
cappuccinos down our throats.
We take a taxi to Milan for $50. The Driver
drops us right in front of the Duomo in the
Piazza del Duomo.
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Hotel
Concorde, Gerenzano 2006 |
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The Duomo, Milan
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Piazza del Duomo,
Milan
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-continued-
We get out of the taxi and cross the Piazza Duomo,
wading through hordes of pigeons.
In the
center of the piazza is a statue of Victor Emmanuel II, the first king
of Italy. On one side of the piazza is the famous Galleria, in front,
The Duomo.
On the other side of the piazza, are two fascist buildings,
where Benito Mussolini made speeches from the balconies. I remember seeing them
as a boy in documentaries in black and white newsreels on TV.
I wonder where
the Piazzale Loreto is, where completely fed up with his lunatic ravings
and strutting machismo, they finally hung il Duce, head down,
from a rope from the roof beams of a gas station, along side his
mistress, Claretta Petacci, after they were shot to death by partisans
on the western shore of Lake Como, fleeing for their lives.
Barbara Grizzuti Harrison writes
in Italian Days, "...In death, Mussolini was spat upon, stoned
and reviled. Claretta, whose death, prompted and determined by her love
for Mussolini, had endeared her to more people than her life ever did,
was dressed for death and hanging in blue high-heeled shoes, a lacy
blouse, and a respectable gray suit. Some biographers say that for
propriety's sake her skirt was held in place by a rope between her legs;
others that a British officer fastened her skirt around her legs with
his belt so as not to reveal her underwear, and that the crowd as a
consequence was enraged by this."
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Mussolini |
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The Top of the Duomo, Milan
2006
(see people at lower middle right for
scale)
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The Top of the Duomo, Milan
2006
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Piazza del Duomo,
Milan
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Inside the Duomo, look
for the tiny red pin light almost in the center of the image. It marks
the spot where a nail from the true Cross rests....
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-continued-
We walk across the piazza into the
magnificent pink marble Basilica, the Duomo, and mom is basically done for the day.
She is in
terrible hip pain. Every step is agony. her face is still swollen from
the fall. I feel so bad for her. With every "sit down and get up" she
releases a mother bear roar of wrenching pain. It's alarming and I say
so, but she says, "What? Oh, I'm fine. It's just the pain." I
admire her stamina.
Mothers....What is this pain compared
to pushing 4 big fat male babies out of her tiny body? I feel a twinge
of conflicted guilt about her painful choice to give me life and my
frustration now in her slowness and deep pain. But I am happy to be with
her, so I can hold her up now when she needs me. I love her very much. We are in Italy. And I
am her darling son. One of them anyway.
I am reminded of the old joke
about italian men and their mothers. "Jesus must be an Italian. Italian
mothers think their son is God. The sons think their mothers are
virgins, and they live with their mothers until they are thirty."
Vicki and Alberto run off to see
the labyrinth of chapels and mom and I rest in a pew at the back of
the Duomo. This is the biggest Basilica I have ever seen (yet). The columns
holding up the vaulted ceiling are bigger than redwood trees. It's
bigger than a football field inside. It took centuries to complete
(1386-1810). It starts out gothic at the altar and ends up Napoleonic at
the front door and is the origin of the italian phrase, " It's like
building a cathedral." It is a stunning example of the over-wrought
"flame-like" final stage of Gothic architecture. Flamboyant and over the
top. It is encrusted with a forest of spires on the roof. Each spire has
a saint on top of it. The whole cathedral exterior is stunning pink
marble from Candoglia, rafted slab by slab across Lake Maggiore 60 miles
away, through waterways and canals engineered by Leonardo di Vinci.
There is a red pin light at the
very back of the altar impossibly high in the ceiling that marks the spot where rests a nail from the cross
that Jesus was crucified upon. It only comes down on hydraulic
lift for 3 days in September for special close up viewing. I point this
out to mom. I can see her cheer up a bit. (Someone
who understands her pain).
She gets up and we go see the Tree of the
Apostles, an ancient collection of bits of fingernails and hair and bone
of the twelve apostles, buried deep in a museum behind and under the front
altar. We see thorns from the hideous crown that Jesus was made to wear
the day he was crucified on Calvary. Later,
we take an elevator to the top of the forest of spires for which the Duomo is
famous. We walk along the narrow catwalk at the edge of the roof. It's
stunning and your mouth just falls open. I feel like an ant on top of a
italian wedding cake.
Vicki was off and running with
Alberto as soon as we get out of the taxi. I am cheered up to see her
finally having a good time. And we catch up with them to see the bits
and pieces of
Jesus and his apostles and to eat lunch across the street in a cafe in front of
Prada inside the famous 4-story tall glass-dome covered Galleria
Vittorio Emanuel. We sit at a cafe and eat salad and pasta and
people-watch. Later, we go out the back to sit at the Piazza della Scala
next to a statue of Leonardo di Vinci in
front of the plain jane, unassuming La Scala Opera House and then take a crippling and painful walk
down the Via Dante to a gelateria. We take a taxi back to the hotel, eat dinner. The
next morning we leave for the Milano Centrale (by taxi) and catch our
train for Florence.
At the end of May we came back to Northern Italy
for 10 days in the
Cinque Terre in Liguria.
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click to play
M i l a n , I t a l y
M a y , 2 0 0 6
Music: a Laudate Dominum,
quoniam bonus est psalmus by The Gregorian Monks of the Monastery of
Santo Domingo de Silos; Pump It Up by Sister
Sledge
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La
Scala, Milan 2006 |
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The
Galleria, Milan 2006 |
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