Starting Catch-Up: Milan

Alright, alright, so I'm still learning the ropes of this whole "blogging" thing.  Lesson #1: If one does not blog regularly, one becomes backed up and, subsequently, overwhelmed.  So this is the beginning of our "catching-up" era in the blog, where I begin to recollect all that we have done, wade through the massive amounts of pictures we have already accumulated and chip away at getting up-to-speed.

After our beautiful Saturday on Lake Maggiore, we couldn't wait to see more Italy and planned to visit Milan the next day.  Naturally, we ended up sleeping in until 12:30 (blaming the jet-lag, of course) and spent the day lounging at the pool (Luke) and frantically catching up on Masters assignments (Steph).  Luckily Luke had Monday off, so we decided to travel to Milan the following day.  After a stressful car ride to a train station on the outskirts of Milan (which included almost getting run over by a cable car and numerous ignored requests from our European Garmin to travel the wrong way down one-way streets or enter a freeway via the off-ramp), we were at last walking up the metro steps and found ourselves looking straight at the Milan Duomo.  It is, in a word (or two), absolutely spectacular.

We got right down to business: gelato.  We decided to enjoy our first tastes of this beloved Italian gelato in front of the Duomo.

 Let it be known that pistachio (my choice) is the best flavor in the history of the world (though Luke prefers a caffe and caramel combo)

We then wandered over to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, which is, in a sense, the world's first shopping mall.  It was built by Giuseppe Mengoni around 1867 (who never got to see its success as he fell to his death a few days before it opened - yikes).  The architecture was absolutely amazing and even though Luke wouldn't let me buy anything "right now" (the stores inside are primarily Gucci, Prada, etc. - and I'm pretty sure "not right now" meant "not in this lifetime"), it was an amazing experience to walk through it.

Wandering around, we run across a lot of these "average streets."  This one in Milan seemed especially quintessential of Italy; we're still having a hard time not feeling like we're walking around a movie set whenever we walk anywhere over here.

After seeing some of the more "touristy" sites in Milan, we decided to be a little more European and do the Italian thing to do on a nice afternoon: find a castle to hang out at.  Luckily, there's one in the middle of Milan amidst the financial buildings and shopping districts.

We spend some time relaxing in the castle's park, reading and journaling... and started feeling as though we could definitely get used to this.