Ats'a Nice!

"L.O.V.E." sculpture by Maurizio Cattelan -
in front of Milan's historic Stock Exchange

Italians are pretty. They just are. I’m Italian but I look nothing like the guidos in It-lee. No olive skin, no bouncy hair, no flowing clothes, no perky bosom, no "Vaffanculo!" attitude. I’m more of the Mrs. Roper of the Italian breed. And with the crazy heat and humidity in Italy last July, I was like Mrs. Roper crossed with wet dog. It was so shvitzy that we must have changed (no, peeled off) our clothes three times a day. 

Milano Centrale Train Station

By the 3rd day we had to do laundry, but where? Finding a laundromat in Rome was about as easy as finding change in my car. And the iPhone was about as helpful as my dad giving driving directions. At this point I didn't even think that Europeans did laundry. I was sure that when their clothes were dirty they just threw them away and bought new ones.... and smoked an entire pack of cigarettes while doing it. 

Someone playing the fiddle on a ruin.

We found a lavanderia a gettoni (laundromat) on our last day in Rome and it was run by none other than Chinese/Italians. Chinese fucking Italians! Who knew! I can’t even explain how amazing their accents were. I could have stayed in there all day, listening to them switch from Chinese to Italian to English and back again - even the hand gestures were fanfuckingtastic! But Mr.P needed coffee so we sat at the tiniest of tiny bars, sipping espresso, waiting for our laundry to finish. Only in Europe could doing laundry seem so European. 

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele

Our next stop was Milan. Why Milan? Because I really wanted to see Leonardo DaVinci's Last Supper. Yeah, I'm a big ol' non religious type person who loves religious art. Who knew! 

The torino (little bull) mosaic inside the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele.
Locals spin on his balls for good luck. 

They say Milan is the style capitol of the world and it's true, it makes Beverly Hills look like a swap meet. But it's ugly. It wasn't vibrant or alive the way Rome or Florence was. It was loaded with trains and train tracks and train wires everywhere and it was grey....like very grey. The buildings were grey, the trains were grey, the sky was grey, our hotel was grey. Even the people were grey. It was very Blade Runner.

Santa Maria delle Grazie - notice the train wires.

We had a few hours to kill before our reservation time to see The Last Supper so we took a walk around the city and ended up at the 150 year old Galleria Vittorio Emanuele ll mall - which for all you Westsiders out there, looks just like the Westside Pavilion. It's full of high end stores and pricy cafes and it's packed to the gills with well dressed, smoking, hand-gesturing Italians. It was so loud in there, it was like being at my grandmother’s house during Christmas. Even tho the food was crazy fucking expensive, we decided to splurge and have lunch there. 

We found one cafe where the host didn't give us malocchio and ordered the cheapest thing on the menu: pizza. And let me tell you.....the people in Milan may be cranky, the stores may be pricey, the city may look like paste, but the pizza we had in Milan was the best pizza I’ve ever had. And their idea of individual sized pizzas are the size of fucking truck tires. Naturally we had a couple of cocktails and the RedHead ordered Ciccolato (Italian hot chocolate) because that’s what pre-teens do on 2,000 degree days...they order fucking hot chocolate. 

The most expensive hot cocoa I've ever had.
Like drinking hot, dark chocolate pudding. Fanfuckingtastic!

Quattro Formaggi (4 cheese) pizza

After lunch we headed out to Santa Maria delle Grazie for our appointment with DaVinci's Last Supper. 

Duomo di Milano

The painting is disappearing rapidly so in order to preserve what's left, they have it encased behind a thick wall of glass in a temperature controlled room. They only allow 25 people, 15 minutes at a time to see it - naturally tickets sell out months in advance so you have to be diligent if you want to get them (it took us 3 nights, 2 iPhones and a landline to finally get our tickets). When you get there, you are escorted down a long path, then ushered thru two de-humidifying chambers until you enter a very dark room with super high ceilings and that's when you realize that you're standing right in front of it....the last fucking supper...not someone's decoupaged clock or velvet wall hanging, but the real deal. Immediately we hear a woman yell over the loudspeaker: "No peektures! No foh-tohs! No moo-vees! No touch'a da' glass'a!" 

Il Cenacolo - see how huge it is.
Because of environmental factors and paint 
that was used, very little of the original painting remains.

DaVinci painted Il Cenacolo (Eeel Chen-ahh-koh-loh) on the dining room wall of a monastery between 1494-1498 and it's magnificent. It just is. And it's HUGE. I mean like FUCKING HUGE. And even with how deteriorated and faded it is and the fact that some guy cut off Jesus' feet to put in a door, it's really moving. I mean I was so taken by it that I just wanted to run up to it and scream, “Watch out Jesus! That guy Judas is a dick!” 

A copy of the Last Supper by Rizzoli, painted in 1520.
Includes Christ's feet and the salt cellar spilled by Judas.

On the opposite wall of The Last Supper is a painting called The Crucifixion, by Giovanni Donato da Montorfano. It's pretty....but next to The Last Supper it looks like a 2 year old painted a couple of stick figures on the back of a building. When our 15 minutes were up, we heard that woman yell over the loudspeaker again: "Pleez'a exit! Times'a up'a! No peektures! No foh-tohs! No moo-vees! No touch'a da' glass'a!" 

The Crucifixion

We only had one night in Milan but after 2 countries, 4 cities and 8 days, we were beat. We decided to grab a quick snack and head back to our hotel. 

Inside the Duomo di Milano

It was Sunday and most of the smaller, less expensive cafes were closed, so we hit the only other place that was open and in our price range:

McDonald's!

Oh don't roll your eyes! It was cheap and it was packed with Italians! I just have one question for those guidos: what’s with the whole no ice in your soda thing? You’re being poached and roasted from the heat and humidity, a little ice couldn’t hurt. 

We spent the rest of the night in our air conditioned hotel room, sitting in our underwear, watching Edward Scissorhands on Italian TV, eating our "Il Solo Beeeg'a Maack'a" and resting up for our last stop....Paris.