After a 36-hour travel experience (from leaving home to arriving at the hotel in Milan), it was nice to finally relax at the NH Jolly Hotel in Milanofiori. Despite the jetlag, I ventured into the city centre on the Monday for a day of solo sightseeing (photo album: Milan Day 1). I returned to the centre on the Friday afternoon (photo album: Milan Day 2) for a guided tour through much the same places, but with some additions and pre-paid tickets - like the last supper which i hadn't been able to get into without a prior booking.

The Il Duomo was majestic - apparently the third largest catholic cathedral in the world (after St. Peters at the Vatican and the cathedral at Seville). The walk along the top of the cathedral was breathtaking - so many spires! I've chosen one photo I took from the top of it as the cover picture for this blog. I joked with another tourist that if Godzilla were to ever appear in Milan, he'd get a sore foot trying to stand on the Duomo (or possibly use it as a masseur?).

The passageway Galleria Vittorio Emanuele is very grand - lots of high-class fancy-schmancy labels had their genesis here, like Prada. It can be seen on the right of the cover picture. It was interesting to observe that the designer prices here are even greater orders of magnitude above what normal people can afford, as compared with their Australian counterparts. Incidentally, I chuckled when i saw the 4 main corner facades in the centre of the gallery - Prada, Louis Vuitton, another fancy designer store I didn't know and ... McDonalds. Of course - if there's a famous/popular corner, you can rest assured that maccas will be on it.

The La Scala was alot less impressive than I expected. In my solo tour, i didn't bother paying to see inside, but I saw it anyway on the Friday as it was part of the group tour. The inside was incredibly ornate in comparison with the outside and worth the inside visit :)

The big fort in parco sempione is quite awe-inspiring, though I probably spent more time searching for geocaches in the park - found two :)

Leonardo Da Vinci's painting of the Last Supper was well worth the last minute scrambling around for a spot. It's amazing to think this was painted so many years ago - and even more amazing to see just how close the painting came to being destroyed in WWII. I can understand the temperature/humidity controlled room, but the crowd-shuffling, automatic-door security system seemed a bit excessive to me.

The only bad experience while in Milan came the morning after my solo sightseeing day, when I went to grab my wallet and realised it was nowhere in the hotel room. A frantic search through the hotel shuttle bus later, and I was soon on the phone to Visa, putting a stop to my credit card and ordering a replacement asap. They were actually pretty good about it and I had a new Visa card and wallet within 48 hours :) As travel catastrophes go, this was pretty mild :)

As interesting and beautiful a city as Milan is, after 2 half-days, you've really seen all there is to see. So, on my last full day in Italy, I thought I'd go on a day excursion and I jumped on a train to the Cinque Terre (a 3-hour trip).
These 5 towns along the Italian coastline are spectacular and totally deserving of the hype surrounding them! I had less than 6 hours to see them all - and managed to do a reasonable job - though it's certainly an area I'd like to see more thoroughly, perhaps even do the numerous national park walks (photo album: Cinque Terre).