Day 9: Curses, Foiled Again

Things didn’t go smoothly, but still had fun

Greetings all

Today, we roamed around the Milan city center. This started brilliantly at the Castello Sforzesco. It’s a beautiful medieval fortress which is still in pretty good shape, having been maintained and modernized over the centuries. Now it also includes nine small museums, though we didn’t get to see them.

I took a ton of pictures here… and I’m not going to show you any right now. Taking pictures on my phone is great, but transferring them to the pad is a nuisance. There will be some major pictures posts when I get back though.

Anyway, from there we started roaming about the city center. We went to La Scala, the major opera house, and it’s gorgeous. Down the way from that is the hotel Verdi lived in until he died. That was pretty cool too.

But the first of my frustrations now happened. Our tour guide took us through the fashion district. There are some interesting courtyards in there and a neat medieval street, but mostly it was shops that we didn’t stop at, all of which were shops I wouldn’t have stopped at even if we could. I really don’t care about Cartier or Prada, but we dutifully marched something like 2 miles up and down these roads.

Sigh. Side note: about 6 miles walked today so we got our steps in.

Anyway, from there we went through the Galleria. This could be a neat place, but it was so packed it tripped both my wife and I’s defensive mechanisms. Plus, we were beat and needed a break.

Fortunately, that led to what should have been a highlight of the trip, the Duomo. It was, partially, but was a big frustration too.

OK, I got special access tickets that included the terraces. What I didn’t realize is that meant I had to go to the terraces in order to see the inside. The problem is the terraces are the top of the building on the outside which are nerve-wracking enough, being 100 plus feet up, but to get down you have to climb up another 50 feet of stairs before coming back down.

Yeah, no.

So we escaped by taking another set of stairs down that put us outside. We were assured we could still get in the Duomo. In fact, I was told repeatedly we had access to everything.

But the only other way in was a hugemongous line that even though we had special access tickets that were supposed to let us jump the line, the guard didn’t honor it. Then another guard said that if we went the way we first entered, we could skip the elevator ride up to the terrace and cut inside. Then the other guard at that entrance said no, there’s no actual way to do that. You have to go up the elevator, there’s no way around at that entrance.

That’s frustrating that I paid for a ticket and didn’t get fair value. However, I’m actually livid about it.

Here’s why. The wife saw people with special access tickets escorted to the front of the line. Why them and not us? Then we found out another part of our tour group went in the same entrance we had, said they couldn’t go up the elevator, and then the guy running the elevator let them in the way the other guard said didn’t exist.

Gee, thanks very much.

So, yeah, I got a ton of cool photos from the terrace part I did go through, but never got to the inside and now I never will thanks to guards who didn’t know their jobs.

After that, we made our way back to the bus with a stop for a gelato. Once on the bus, we went to a quilt store.

Quilting is not as big a thing over here, so an actual quilt store isn’t as common and this one was really cool. Even I thought it was cool. It also had an orange cat who demanded petsies, so I might have been influenced.

Anyway, tomorrow is off to Lake Como where we’ll see a silk factory. That promises to be really fun.

Y’all have a great night.