A Milano Thanksgiving

Our first foray into European travel as a “local” was a success this past week with the short hop adventure to Milano. The Italian soldiers with large machine guns were none the wiser and did not request our Suisse papers at either crossing but a eagle eye conductor did bust us for trying to run afoul of Clara’s half price rail card. We won’t soon make that mistake again. There were however, some interesting sights to share….
Since leaving LA, I’ve had the effect of snow following me where ever I go. The first day in CH (henceforth, I will use this acronym for Switzerland because I’m too lazy to type that long word each time), it showed at lake level where we live, a 5x per year event. More recently in Atlanta, there were flurries when I arrived too. The funniest part was is also snowed and roughly 2 cm stuck. This might now seem like a significant event in a town with a latitude roughly equivalent to NYC, but in the last 30 yrs is has only snowed 3x (1986, 2006, and when I showed up). An interesting trend is developing. I should head back to LA to see if I can break that 100 yr record.
I would also like to take this opportunity to voice my displeasure with the euro style “shower.” That stupid handheld thing on the hose pisses me off more than I can say. It’s no wonder people don’t like to shower here. I don’t like it either with that thing. What I’m struggling to comprehend is that the swiss and germans engineer the crap out of everything else. How the hell have they missed the boat on the shower? Needless to say, the “shower” in our hotel room was sub-par. Everything else was satisfactory. The location was killer. If going to Milano, I would recommend it but you would have to consider the bathing strategy in warmer months during an extended stay. Info at http://www.the-place.it/
We also went to see the Cencalo, aka the Last Supper by Da Vinci. Some of you might have heard of this from some book or movie. I can’t remember the name. I just remember a really bad haircut on Tom Hanks in the film. The irony of going to see something called the last supper on a holiday known for its fabulously lavish supper was not lost on us. It was quite impressive. I’m not sure if I can attest to John looking like Mary Magdalene but I’m certainly not the most scholarly person out there. The word on the street was you have to book months in advance to see it since they only allow 25 people in at a time on a scheduled basis. While this is likely a scam, we still had to book with a giant yellow tour bus group to get in to see it on such short notice. It was our first time on a tour bus group. While the stories were rewarding, it still felt very stale and canned to me. Since the trip was impromptu to we had not done any research on the sights in Milano, it was educational to hear from an expert. Oh yeah, no pictures allowed so you won’t find any pictures on our Picasa sight of the painting.
Also part of the tour was a visit to the original and oldest prada store in the world, founded in 1913. Even though they were offering free orange juice on a silver platter to all who dared to enter the store, I still was not compelled to purchase a overpriced purse for clara. She tried her best to convince me (not really). One of the more amusing sites that I was just outside the door.
In the cross roads of the galleria, there were some mosaics tiled into the floor. One was the shield of Milano, another a seal of the king, but the most interesting one had to be of this bull. Not sure that I recal the significance for the bull. There was a depression in the bull’s netheregion. The tiles had been removed and concave, concrete depression in its place. Apparently, the legend is to place your heal in the recessed area and turn 360 degrees around while keeping that heel in place. The net result is thousands of people annually, smash this poor bull’s balls into the earth and grind it in for good measure. The locals say it’s for luck. I say it to laugh at the tourists. Pictures of this fiasco are posted on our picture site.
Along with the bull pix, you might also find a picture there of some mushrooms. Not just any shrooms though. We are talking fresh, white Alba truffles. Retail price 15,000 euros per kilo. Needless to say, we did not purchase. If they had offered a 10% rebate after filling out 17 forms, we might have considered.
Other interesting culinary oddities included Italian meatballs, sans meat. Yup. I dunno? Also, we had a mozzarella feast one night with 5 fist size balls (lots of ball references in this post, n’est pas?), each having a dramatically different flavor. You might be interested to know that Italy has very proudly surpassed the French with having more types of cheese than there are days of the year. Between france, Italy, and CH, I must have died and gone to cheese heaven. Spare tire, here I come.
Blah. Blah. Blah. More next time…..