28th August: Parma to Milano

We went for a little drive in the morning so that we could say we had seen a little more of Parma than just their propensity for good lamb chops. We went into the main part of town, and we are pretty certain we took a wrong turn and drove down a street we were not meant to. You get a good eye for these things after a while, generally because of the stares and pointing fingers of the people you drive past. We saw a little more of Parma, maybe more than we should have, and tried very hard to avoid all the people on bicycles, as they turned and stared at us.

We are on the freeway to Milan as I type, but there has been an accident up ahead somewhere, so rather than sitting on 130kmh, we’re doing just 60. A high speed train just went past (the track runs along the freeway here) and oh my, high speed it was! I heard a noise that was like a whizzing rocket, and looked up just in time to see the end of the train!

MILAN:

Checked in, regular stuff. Pretty plain motel not particularly close to anything, but Milan is like Venice, bloody expensive, and so you get what you can. We got directions for the bus, but hey, the same bus number comes on both sides of the street, and so it can be a little difficult to work out which side of the road heads into town. Fortunately, we picked the right side. we just missed the railway station that we were meant to get off at – and so we just stayed on the bus and found the next one, which happened to be ‘Central’ and the main station. So it all worked out well for us. It took us a bit to figure out the ticket system and I am pretty certain we annoyed the lady in the ticket office with our syllable by syllable Italian. We ended up with a two day pass though which was pretty cheap and should see us through.

We had decided to head to the Cathedral first.  The Cathedrals seem to be a good starting point in any Italian city. I had on a top that didn’t cover my shoulders though, and so we figured we’d look around, and decide if we wanted to come back the next day to look inside. The cathedral was impressive from the outside, but we obviously looked like tourists because a guy from Cameroon decided we needed a “good luck Africa” friendship band. He was like the women with rosemary branches in Spain, once he got his band laying somewhere on you, you had to give him money or the ‘good luck Africa’ could become ‘bad luck for you buddy’. We learnt to avoid these guys like the plague.

Naturally, the cathedral was on a huge piazza and to the left of it, was a big shopping ‘mall’ (for lack of a better word). The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is an ornate shopping arcade. It’s also called ‘Il Salotto di Milano’ which means ‘Milan’s drawing room’. The architect (Giuseppe Mengoni) died when he fell from its scaffolding a year before its opening in 1878. It has a floor plan in the shape of a Latin cross, with an octagonal centre adorned with mosaics representing four continents (Europe, America, Africa and Asia). It has a fabulous metal and glass dome ceiling as well, which made it all very well lit. It was full of all the luxury and glam shops that you’d expect in Milan. The four corners at the heart of the cross were very telling; Prada, Bernasconi, Louis Vuitton and then… McDonalds!

We looked at a few restaurants in there as we wanted some lunch, but they seemed overpriced and aimed at the tourist market, so we headed outside and into a back street. We found a place that looked good and sat down. The waiter came over, and he ended up being a total character. We’re learning to go by the waiters suggestions, and this one suggested the ‘buffalo mozzarella, fresh today’. Then he suggested a main meal too (which I ended up with) and then he suggested the wine. Seriously, this has been one of the best meals we have ever eaten. The owner of the restaurant came over with a ‘bag holder’ for me, one of those ones that has a big glass jewel on the top and you hang your bag off the table with it – it was obviously unladylike to put your bag on the table up against the wall. He made a big scene about it, about how expensive it was as it had come all the way from Chinatown, but how he would let me use it. These two were like characters from a movie, all hands and every word ending with ‘a’ – “Letta me putta dis baga ona dis holda for you”. Anyway, the wine, which was local, was amazing. The food was out of this world. The buffalo mozzarella was creamy and so delicate. It’s become my latest addiction. Next came the mains - Mark had three types of ravioli and I had black ravioli stuffed with sea bass with mullet roe cream. We enjoyed the waiters’ antics no end – he had been to Australia and when Mark asked him for how long, his reply was “I was in Australia for about two days, and then spent a week in Margaret River wines”… think about it….

We finished off the meal with a big platter of fresh fruit and then we were shouted another one of those rounds of yellow aperitif! The waiter (who had by then finished his shift) sat down with us and chatted for a while and then when we finished up, the owner came over to ask how we enjoyed it. I ended up handing him back the bag holder, telling him to look after it as it was leant to me by a restaurant owner, and it was very expensive as it had come from China – needless to say, I left the restaurant with the bag holder (which I just totally treasure and giggle every time I use now).

We wandered out of there (a little giggly after all the wine and aperitif) and decided to just walk and see where we ended up. We wandered through some old streets, looked at old buildings, and found ourselves frequently surrounded by designer clothes and shoe shops. After about an hour, we stopped for gelati (well, I had gelati, Mark had beer) and then we were off again. We came across what we thought were old city walls – that ended up being an old palace. Castello Sforzesco was built on the site of an old Visconti palace in the mid 15^th century. What remains of it now has been filled with art and archeological museums – and on the inside of the ruined walls, collections of artefacts have been set up. There was one section which was all porticos from buildings around the area. Around the entire palace was a ‘dead moat’ – there were cannonballs lying here and there, but the main use for the moat these days was obviously for pussycats to stalk pigeons in. There was an old guy just inside the walls actually, who had laid down bowls of food for the cats there – and he was walking around with a stick, shooing away the pigeons (I told you they were bloody big!) who were trying to steal the cats food while they were eating.

We kept walking past the old castle and came to a big park and could hear drummers having a good old time. We walked through, sat down for a while and listened and then walked some more and came across another big archway. We don’t really have any information on this arch, but it is called Arco Della Pace. From there, we were just totally buggered and so we caught a tram back to where we thought we could catch the train from, but that just ended up being a disaster, so we jumped in a taxi back to the motel instead.

~ Big day in Milan photos here