This morning we woke up to take a bus ride to Milan. At breakfast, I found that at least half of our group is as sick as I am. We’re all offering up medications to each other to see what works best because all of us were at different stages of whatever was going around. We needed to get to Milan early so we could get an inside tour of the Duomo. We took a pit stop at a gas station where I picked up some Italian snacks for the ride.
When we got to the Duomo it instantly reminded me of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona that I had learned about in one of my Spanish classes. It was white, towering, and had many spires.
The inside reminded me of the bottom of the Cathedral of Learning at Pitt.
Then we had free time to go to lunch. Our tour guide recommended that we go to a placed called Luini for panzerotti, which are sort of like calzones. I tried to branch out and got one stuffed with olives, onions and tomatoes. It was incredibly good.
We then went into a seven story designer mall, where we were glared at by nearly every sales associate. We laughed at some of the crazy shoes and tried to guess the price of more basic items like sweatshirts. I could understand why we got glared at.
Then we continued our tour, and our walk around Milan. We walked through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, one of the most famous shopping centers. It was filled with designer stores.
We then got to visit Sforza Castle. We learned that Milan was often a target for takeovers, because it was the middle ground between Italy and the rest of Europe. We walked around the courtyard and got to see some of the original paintings in the area. Now there’s grass where the moat once was, and now a colony of cats lives there, so that was definitely a highlight.
We then returned to our hotel. These past couple of days have been intense and most of us were sick, so my room ended up napping until dinner.