Finally a Least Favorite

I have been talking about my thoughts of where I would like to live someday.  I honestly spent brain cycles worrying about, “what if I like Milan so much I want to make it my new home?”  Over the course of two hours after arrival, I breathed a sigh of relief.  No, this was not going to be a problem.

Never before had I been this far north on my previous trips because I had heard it was expensive.  I had heard right.  Most restaurants and places are about twice or more the price of the south.  Finding someplace cheaper requires subway rides out from the city center.  On my own I would have never gone, but The Seamstress had basically one item on her *must do* list for Italy and that was to visit the painting of The Last Supper, which is located in Milan.  

I always assumed it was a traditional painting hanging in the Louvre, or some other museum but not so.  The Last Supper is just painted on a wall of one end of a fellowship hall in a mid-sized church!  At some point in history they even decided to put in a doorway and just cut off Jesus feet to install the arch!   Can you imagine the public outcry if something like that were to be proposed now?

If someone dropped me into the city, not telling me a thing, I would think I was in New York.  I feel like the two cities have the same general vibe. I even joked there are about the same number of Italians.  Everyone is in a rush and the traffic is bad.  There are some astoundingly attractive women walking around.  But Milan has a much different feel than the rest of Italy.  It is much more modern.  What it lacks is the old world charm found further south.  Yeah, there are some old buildings around.   It is architecturally interesting seeing the base of what became the Italianate style.  

Just like New York the subways were packed with people. Lots of people on the streets made walking a matter of dodging oncoming pedestrians.  It was crowded, not even so much in a leisurely tourist way, but that of a focused business person rushing to work.

I have many times mentioned how safe I feel in Italy.  The skinniest streets, the darkest corners, I feel like I am not in any danger.  But crossing a large park in Milano I got the good old fashioned American feeling of, “this area is totally sketch.”  There were lots of dodgy types hanging around giving us a look over and it wasn’t even after dark yet.  We had crossed the park to save us a couple of blocks on the walk to a restaurant.  There was no way we could follow the same route on the way back.

The restaurant, La Ricetta on Via Giulio, as it turned out wasn’t really even worth the walk.  The prices were what drew us there.  Only a little more than we had been paying.  It was a pasta place run by Koreans.  When we first arrived, right after they opened for dinner they didn’t seem happy to even seat us in their almost empty restaurant.  But there was a table next to the door, right beside a loud, rather largish woman talking on her speaker phone.  I was nearly shoulder to shoulder with her.  It was early in the trip and I was not yet practiced enough to lean and loud enough for her phone to hear say “Metti giù il telefono e torna a letto!” so I went for the long stare instead.  Eventually she took it private and at least cut down the irritating noise by half.  The meal was alright but little better.  My Maccheroncini Alla Puttanesca was 7€, large tubes of pasta that were quite al dente, not crunchy but tough and gummy.  The sauce, had I been eating it in Minneapolis, I might have considered better than average but I don’t deny being spoiled by the fantastic food of the last two weeks.  In the context of Italy and the sauce I had myself made the night before it was nothing special.

The following night we were up for something different.  We found a Thai place, Ristorante Mo, a few subway stops away and had a great meal there.  We asked for extra spicy and they delivered. The red curry chicken was perfect.  I do have to admit it is nice, in a city as diverse as Milano, to have great ethnic restaurant choices.  Cost was around 15€.  So over double the night before but enough flavor to keep me happy.

By far, the best meal, plus experience, in Milano was pizza at Piz on via Torino 34.  A short little dead end alley. They open right at noon and immediately served us a glass of champaign and sample slice of their pizza.  The place is colorful and high energy.  They served a great pizza in a short amount of time.  

The gustatory low point was the final night.  Rain induced desperation took us into a very close-by burger place.  I knew how bad a hamburger at a place like this was likely to be, so stuck with a pasta.  It was tomato sauce the consistency of ketchup in a kitschy serving dish that had a cheese grater built into the lid.  It is bad when the serving dish is the highpoint of the meal.  Even given my description I still think I had the best meal at the table.  It is very, very rare you can get a burger to make an American happy.  In three years I have found exactly one place and this year when I passed by it I discovered it had been turned into a McDonalds.

A close second to St Peter’s in Roma, the Duomo Milano should not be missed.  The marble work and sheer scale of the building is amazing.  It was the first of its type to hide the flying buttresses in the design.  It is only when you look at the model of the church residing in the museum across the street you can see how they are built in.  Then, you can spot them from the ground outside once you know where they are.  The museum is just as interesting as the cathedral itself.  They have lots of the leftover architectural parts and bits removed during previous remodels.   I thought the generations of rain spouts particularly interesting.

One weird coincidence of the visit, I had heard from my ex earlier in the day.  She was letting me know a hundred year old lodge we were familiar with with had burned to the ground the night before.  Later, walking around on the off and on rainy day, I ducked into a smaller duomo, Cripta di San Sepolcro, to escape a shower.  Nothing compared to Duomo Milano, it was still big, interesting, and just a couple of blocks from the AirBnb I was in.  I am not religious in the least but they are often free and it is interesting to see the design and marble work.  They offered not just the church, which was interesting, but for a few euro, a tour of the crypts in the basement.  There I discovered it was the frequent hangout of St. Charles Borromeo, namesake of the church we had been married in!  My moment of “all the gin joints in all the world.”  Interesting when stuff like that happens isn’t it?

St Charles Borromeo kneeling at a crypt

The last day I bought some souvenir refrigerator magnets because I plan to never go back.  Then over the final cup of coffee, a first in all my travels of Italy, I was short-changed ten euro at a coffee shop on the duomo plaza.  A fitting end to my stay in the city.