What is better than seeing Milano?

Seeing Milano with a friend as our Italian tour guide! I met Manu (Emanuela) in Australia when we worked together at Ignite. She moved back to Milan last year, so when we were planning places to visit in Europe, we thought Milan would be perfect since we hadn't been there and also had a friend there.

The weekend started off on a bit of a low. Upon meeting Manu, she started to ask us about the temperature (as I was wearing shorts). This reminded Penny that she had left her jacket on the plane! Doh. So, we had to go back to the lost and found to try to ask them if they could check the plane for her jacket. It was late, and the cleaning crew wasn't going to clean the plane until the morning, so we would have to call back on Friday to see if they had found the jacket. I must also put in here that before we had even caught the train for Amsterdam for the flight, Penny had already lost a glove and realized too late that she had forgotten her sun glasses. Not a good start.

Penny, Manu, and Scott @ CF Meda

Friday was a much better day, although the morning was a bit different than our normal start to a trip as we usually wake up and get right into touring the city. However, when you visit a friend who is a trainer, works at a crossfit gym and has to work in the morning, you go get a workout in first thing in the morning. Manu took us to Crossfit Meda. She did a PT session with a client, so Penny and I did the WOD (workout of the day). The place was very nice, had lots of equipment and plenty of room for clients.

After a shower and breakfast (we didn't have the traditional Italian breakfast of croissant and coffee, but eggs and tomatoes - yummy) we headed out to see the sights of Milan. Manu planned for us to get off the train and come out in the perfect spot to see Duomo di Milano. Awe inspiring view!

Duomo di Milano

This is the symbol of Milan and could hold the entire population of Milan (40,000) when it was built and is the third largest Catholic church in the the world behind St Peter's in Rome and the Seville Cathedral. A massive cathedral in a huge piazza. We have seen some big cathedrals in our travels, but this one was impressive. It has more than 3500 statues including 96 giant gargoyles. Besides the statues, the spires are quite impressive as well.

Spires view from the roof

The inside was fairly similar to most cathedrals with it's artwork and naves. A special part of this visit includes going up on the roof! You get a great view of the city and an even closer view of the spires, statues, and the famous "Madonnina" bronze statue on top of the main spire. We aren't religious, but I am amazed at how much time and effort went into building the cathedrals around the world and the history behind them. Thinking about the man power and ingenuity to build these massive buildings is very interesting.

Spires close up

View from the roof

Penny & Scott on the roof

"Madonnina" statue

After we were done with the cathedral, we moved on to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. This is one of the worlds oldest shopping malls and is covered with a glass dome to connect Piazza del Duomo to Piazza della Scala. The floor has some nice art work done in the tiles. This style of mall, with its cover, is where the name galleria came from.

Covered shopping mall

Nice covering for the long walk!

Cool tile work and emblem of Milan

After this is was time to eat a little lunch and have a local treat called panzarotti. This is like a calazone, but littler and the dough is much sweeter. We waited in a long line to get one, but it moved quickly and was well worth the wait. We enjoyed this, and I really should have had two - but didn't want to get back in the line!

The Teatro alla Scala is the theatre where there is great opera. It is supposed to be nice on the inside, but we didn't go in to have a look and didn't get tickets to see a show. I would have loved to do that, but we didn't have time to fit everything in, so no opera. Bummer.

We stopped for gelato after seeing this place and ate while we walked to the Castello Sforzesco. There is a line from the movie "My Life In Ruins" which is "What is it about tourists and ice cream." We use this line all the time during our travels because we always see people eating ice cream no matter where we are travelling. Now we were the ones eating the ice cream! A flavor we both thought was fun to say was stracciatella - vanilla with chocolate flakes.

My chocolate and strawberry gelato

The castle was a four sided square castle with a tower at each corner. It houses several museums now. There was an interesting display of different color birds in the main square. We had to get some pics of the birds as they were quite large. There was also some live music being played in the garden area.

Scott & Manu at Castlello Sforzesco

Next to castle is the beautiful Parco Sempione, where we had a little break and soaked up the surroundings. What life must have been like living in a castled area. Well protected by the walls, but was life good? As I'm reading "Game of Thrones" at the moment and seeing castles, I can't imagine life was too good unless you were part of the "royal family".

Pointy spikes! Yikes!

We were walking to our next destination and saw a huge sewing machine and massive needle and thread at an intersection. Interesting place for this, but was kind of cool piece of art work in the middle of the city!

Santa Maria dlle Grazie is a church and convent. We didn't go inside, but it had a nice open area just inside the main entrance.

Santa Marie delle Grazie

The Basilica di Sant' Ambrogio is one of the oldest churches in Milano. It was built in the area where many martyrs of the Roman persecution were buried.

Penny is wondering who these doors were made for. The handle for knocking is taller than her. Were they that much bigger back then than we are now or is this just a symbol of their hierarchy?

 The best known Roman ruins in Milano is the Colonne di San Lorenzo. This is right next to the Basilica di San Lorenzo. You could see the wear and tear from the hundreds of years it has been standing, but still very impressive!

We had a busy day filled with walking around, so it was time for some dinner and found a place for a late night ice cream...yes another one! What a wonderful warm, sunny day we had in Milano!

Saturday we got up and went off to Como. We were looking for the funicular to take us to the top, but missed the signs, so ended up driving close to the top of the mountain. Then headed back down through some narrow roads and had to stop several times for vehicles going up. Love the narrow roads in Europe! They make for a bit more excitement while driving. We walked around the town and headed toward the lake.

Manu & Penny contemplating life at Lake Como

It was a great time and a bit more relaxing day after Milano. After a pizza for lunch we headed down to Pavia, where Roberto, Manu's boyfriend, lives. Manu and I went to the weight lifting club and did about an hour of O-lifting. I know 2 workouts on a holiday, but it was nice to be in the small confines of this lifting club and seeing some really good lifting going on. the place was just big enough for 8 platforms and not much else. We also got to see a 120kg weight bar from back in 1870's used by the champion lifter at the time.

Wouldn't want to drop that on your toes!

While we were busing working out, Penny chose to continue in holiday mode and walked around the town, saw the sights and did some shopping.

Ponte Coperto - covered bridge  

This covered bridge was built in the 1300's, but was destroyed in WWII by bombs. It had to be rebuilt with only five arches. The first bridge had 7 arches.

We finally got to meet Roberto and have a drink before our dinner with Roberto's brother's and their families at restaurant up in the hills by a castle. This was quite interesting as Penny and I were with 10 Italians and a Frenchman for dinner. Their English wasn't great, but we had a wonderful dinner and were able to communicate well enough to enjoy the dinner with some very lovely people!

Sunday was spend walking around Pavia with Manu and Roberto before we had to go to the airport. Our first stop was Castlello Visconteo, built for the Visconti family. It now houses some museums. We walked through the University area as well.

Pavia is a nice little town. We would like to thank Manu and Roberto for being such wonderful hosts, planning a great weekend, and being genuinely lovely people. It made for a wonderful experience and different to our other trips in Europe so far because of your guidance.

Roberto, Manu, Penny, & Scott

And for something different.... The USA!

Ok, it has been awhile since our last post.  That is because we spent two weeks in the USA (and then another week trying to recover from the jet lag).  Granted, most of it was work for me (Penny), Scott did have a chance to spend some time with his family.

For those of you who don't know, I am (for lack of a better word) a professor.  Granted that is not my actual title in Australia, but rather it is descriptive word so that everyone knows approximately what I do. Being a professor, I teach and do research. Part of doing research is talking about that research with colleagues at conferences around the world. And this was exactly the reason we were in the USA - for me to attend two different conferences. I can't believe that in the 10+ years that I have lived in Australia this was the first US based conference I have attended.  One thing I learned from these conferences is that I need to come back to the USA more.  There is a lot of great research and great people there, and I need to make sure I know them (and they know me).

Jason, Penny, Steph and Drew all did their PhD together.

As for the conferences themselves, they were good. I learned new things, meet new people and reconnected with old friends.  The first conference was in Denver, which is very close to where I did my PhD. As a result, lots and lots of my old friends and classmates also decided to attend this meeting. It was great seeing them all and learning what they had been up to.

Amy, still one of my best friends! Love you girl!

Of course, I also had lots of friends in Denver region that were not at this conference. I might have just had to sneak away on one of the nights to catch up with them!  As our love of great beer did begin in Colorado, it was not surprising that we met up at a pub.  Granted the group has changed a bit (with the addition of lots of kids!), it was really really great seeing everyone. We love this group of people and miss them heaps.  We have also decided that we really need to visit Denver more often as well - our friends there are super awesome - and the beer is pretty good too.

Joe and Scott celebrate their birthdays together!

We sampled a "few" beers in honor of Scott's Birthday.

4 out 5 of our nieces and nephews

Scott did manage to celebrate his birthday on this trip - Happy Birthday Scott!  He had the wonderful experience of starting the celebration in Colorado with great beer, friends and my cousins and ended the celebration in St Louis with his family (can't remember the last time either of us was with family on our actual birthday!).  And what do good parents do when their two grown boys come home (without their wives and kids), they put them to work of course.  Lots of little errands and fixing up of things around the house were done. They did a great job and I am sure re-kindled that "brotherly" bond of long ago!

I on the other hand headed to San Francisco for my second meeting. This meeting was HUGE (over 7000 participants) and on a very diverse range of topics. That said, my little area was clustered together and I did have more opportunities for learning, networking and catching up with friends. In fact, I met up with guy I hadn't seen in almost 20 yrs!!  We did the first two years of our undergrad degree together before he switched universities.  We happened to reconnect recently on facebook through a mutual friend.  Needless to say, it was great seeing him.

The whole clan!

Once I was finally done with my meeting I did head to St Louis to catch up with Scott and his family. Granted this was a very brief visit, it was still really nice to see everyone!  We even managed to squeeze in a St Louis Cardinals baseball game - to the delight of the boys! The entire lot of family got together as well.  Nieces, nephews, sisters, brothers - what a fun and crazy group!  We don't see our family nearly as much as we want either, but thank goodness for video calls.

Oh, did I mention that I ate and drank to much while we were in the USA??  I find it so difficult to deny all my favorite foods from my childhood -- even though I don't crave them in my daily life.  Thank goodness it was a short visit home!