We headed out to Santa Maria Delle Grazie, the church where Da Vinci had painted his ‘Last Supper’. It’s actually in the convent next door to the church, which just happened to be closed on a Monday (bummer). So we had a look around the church instead, which was just lovely, and decided to try to get in to the convent the next morning. Every wall in the church was painted – there were saints on each pillar and religious scenes in every space possible. Most were still in great condition and it was pretty cool to think that Da Vinci and his contemporaries had wandered around in the same space.
We jumped back on a tram and headed into the main Cathedral as we decided we would have a look around inside there. Avoiding the Cameroon ‘good luck Africa’ boys, we got up close and personal with all the sculpture on the outside of the Cathedral. There was one scene that had cut off legs standing on a pillar – not too sure what that meant, but Mark decided that it meant they hadn’t paid the sculptor enough money; that he did the legs and then said “that’s it, no more, not enough money to work more than that”. There was a large panel that was covered in bronze sculpture – it was incredibly intricate, and the statues of Jesus all had parts on them that were shiny and clean from where people rubbed bits of his body (legs etc). The inside of the Cathedral was, well, cathedralish! Enormous soaring ceilings that were covered in gothic arches and sculpture, huge stained glass windows depicting all sorts of stories (we found one really cool one that was somewhat modern and depicted a scene starting in heaven reaching all the way down to the bright red devils in hell). There were crypts around as well – with actual bodies in them, in various stages of decay. These were all the bishops of the Cathedral, and one had died pretty recently. There was a very good statue at one end, which showed a person (corpse maybe), with all the muscles of the body exposed – it was very different indeed.
All the decaying skinny bodies made us decide it was time for lunch, so we followed all the local workers into a pizza place and sat down. A couple of skinny Italian girls sat at the table next to us, and they ordered a pizza each, so we figured one each was the go. As it turns out, Italian girls have big appetites. We ordered a pizza each, but we would have been more than full with one between us! It was great pizza though, our first ones in Italy. Mark had a Margherita with artichokes, and mine was prosciutto and eggplant – both smothered in mozzarella.
Next we went down to the ‘fashion quadrilateral’ – an enormous block where each clothes designer who is anyone, has a store. Gucci, Prada, D&G, Hugo Boss, Armani, Valentino – you name it, they were there. It was all very drool worthy and probably the best window shopping we’ll ever do!
After two huge days of walking, we headed to the park to just sit and relax for a while and watch the world pass by. It also helps you to regain that last inch of stamina you need, to make it back to your hotel. Once we got moving again, we hit the subway and caught the train back to where we could catch the bus (on the right side of the street) back to the hotel. We had seen a supermarcati (yes, the marcats are super in Italy) and decided to just grab a cooked chook and some salad for dinner. We also picked up a couple of bottles of red wine and polished one of those off that night too. It’s a hard life, but someone has to live it!
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