4.30.08
We had planned on taking a day trip to see the Ferrari Museum today but didn't after all. It is basically 2 hours each way and we can't get into the actually factory only the museum because we don't own a Ferrari. We had many errands to run so we used the time for that. There where several people we needed to find gifts for and we had to ship some stuff/gifts back home via Fedex because of space and weight issues. We also needed to find another power converter, but never did.
We had our last Italian meal and gelato in Italy this evening. Tomorrow we head out to Interlaken, Switzerland!
4.29.08
Brooke and I had a general tour of Milan today, including the Santa Maria delle Grazie church that holds The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. Milan nowadays is renowned for the capital of design and fashion, when it actually took off as a military town. It also served as the capital for the Western Roman empire for a time and is now very metropolitan and commercial.
Our tour started by going through the Castello Sforzesco in the center of Milan. It is from the 14th century and has been restored many times, including a restoration after allied bombing in 1943. After that we visited Teatro alla Scala, where many of the most famous operas by the greatest nineteenth-century composers were first performed.
Then it was on to the Santa Maria to see The Last Supper by Da Vinci. The painting is very large, much larger than we anticipated. To get into the room where the painting is we had to go through a series of opening and shutting of air tight doors. The purpose is for security and to control temperature and humidity. Because it was not frescoed, it is much more fragile and susceptible to degradation.
As we all know by now, the scene portrays the moment in which Jesus tells his disciples that one of them is about to betray him. Our guide named off each disciple in the painting, also touching on the controversy surrounding them. After gazing at it for about 10 minutes a loud voice came over a speaker system saying "PLEASE EXIT"....and that was it. Once again, it was a surreal moment seeing another famous work in person.
After the tour we ate lunch, then I followed Brooke around through all of the top designer shops (this is fashion capital, i had to do it :) We have some of the same shops in Dallas but here they are much much bigger and more attention is given to the presentation of the store. There are entirely separate stores for certain things within a label. There is a Chanel purse store, a Chanel jewelry store, Chanel dress store, etc...That goes for many other big labels as well (Prada, Gucci, etc, etc). The employees in these stores were SO bitchy and stuffy. They followed us throughout the store, eyeballing us the whole time. BLAAAAAA
