So after getting back from Rome on Sunday I was back at Malpensa Airport to pick up Aaron on Monday afternoon. It was great to see him after being gone for twelve weeks. We're used to not seeing each other for long amounts of time, but never as long as it had been this time.
After getting him settled in and making sure he didn't sleep (I beat the jet-lag out of him) we went to the Duomo area. The Christmas tree was being put up and they had it lit up for ten minutes while we were there. I showed Aaron the outside of the Duomo, the Vittorio Emmanuele Galleria (he spun on the bull's testicles for good luck), the outside of La Scala, and the castle. We got dinner near my apartment and I took Aaron to our 100 Flavor (centogusti) shop in order to get him his very first gelato.
Tuesday morning I had to perform for my music class so Aaron actually came along to hear me. He picked a good day to come since it was probably our most interesting class all semester. Then he and I went back to the Duomo, saw the inside, had some panzerotti at Luini's (if you're ever in Milan you have to go there, it's cheap and delicious. Perfect for lunch), and then we climbed to the top of the Duomo. It was so clear outside that you could see the mountains to the north. It was really beautiful.
After that I had to have a horn lessons so Aaron occupied himself by going to La Scala's museum and walking around the castle area. He met me at the IES center and we headed to my apartment to relax a bit before we went and got some traditional Sicilian pizza at Spontini (another place to hit up if you're in Milan).
Wednesday Aaron explored the city some more while I went to Italian class and then we went to see a few churches and wandered around a bit, got lunch, and then I headed to my second class of the day. After that we were going to go to the Science and Technology Museum but the entrance is really confusing to find and by the time we had an idea of where it was the museum was only going to be open for another hour.
However, in the evening he and I both had our first experience at an Italian soccer (or calcio as they say) game. We went to see Inter Milan play FC Twente with Allie as well. Our seats were with all of the Inter Milan fans which was crazy. They are the most organized sports fans ever. They all knew every cheer and some of them were really complicated. Allie and I managed to understand a few but we were even lost. Aaron knows no Italian so I told him what I did understand which still wasn't a lot. Especially when it was a really long and complicated "song" instead of a shorter chant. When Inter scored the one goal of the game everybody went crazy. It was so much fun. And it was really exciting that Inter won!
I don't have classes on Thursdays so Aaron and I decided to take a day trip. I knew Torino was close and I'd heard it was a nice city. It's the third largest in Italy and was the host of the 2006 Winter Olympics (in English it's often referred to as Turin). We took about a two hour train to get there, walked around a lot. We saw the two main piazzas, a student protest in one of them (we steered away from it and watched from a distance. They definitely egged a government building. From what I figured out they were protesting monetary cuts from the public university), a palace or two, Torino's Duomo (which has this shroud that many believe was the shroud on Jesus's face in the tomb and it has an imprint of his face on it), and a few parks. We had a really good lunch and continued to walk around more.
We ended up going to the Cinema Museum but not to see the museum, but to go up in the tower. They have this spire on the building that you can ride and elevator up the museum and up onto the top of it. You can see the mountains all around you and the city of Torino is laid out in front of you. It's really beautiful so we spent a lot of time up there. After that we headed to Torino's Egyptian Museum. Torino actually has the third largest Egyptian collection in the world after Cairo and London. It's also in a museum completely dedicated to Egypt, not among other things as in London apparently. There was a nice student discount so we went and walked around. It was really interesting to see all of this Egypt stuff, even if we were in Italy.
After the Egyptian museum we headed back to the train station (after stopping for gelato of course) and back to Milan. Now, as Thursday was Thanksgiving we decided to go have a really big Italian dinner. We went to another restaurant in my neighborhood and had the primi piatti (pasta) and the secondi piatti (meat usually) as well as dessert. The whole dinner took over two hours to eat and we were stuffed after it. We had originally thought to get two desserts to share and ended up only having one. After that we went and Skyped with my family which was really great. Everybody who was at my house just kept filing past the computer and talking to me. All my cousins from my mom's family got on at the same time (including Sammy the dog) and I talked to my Grandpa and everybody else. I wish everybody could have been there but it was fantastic to talk to those who were. As much as I'm going to miss Milan I'm really looking forward to going home for Christmas Eve and Christmas and getting to see everybody.
So Friday I had three hour Italian. I had booked Aaron a ticket to see Da Vinci's The Last Supper so he went to that first and loved it, as does everybody who sees it. Then he walked around and managed to find himself a leather jacket which was his one purchase for himself. He met me at IES and we grabbed some lunch to go for our train we had to catch to Venezia (or Venice for those of you who don't know Italian names of towns).
When we got to Venice it was pouring rain and freezing. We had to find where we were staying and then we decided to venture back out since it was only 5:30 and we had a lot of time. We took the vaporetto to San Marco to see the outside and ended up wandering around. We popped into a lot of Murano glass shops (definitely one of my favorite things in Venice) and ended up walking all the way to the Rialto Bridge. We found some dinner near the Rialto before heading back for the night.
Luckily we woke up Saturday to blue skies and sun. We went back to San Marco again and went inside. We also went upstairs to go on the terrace that overlooks Piazza San Marco and then to the museum up there which was really interesting. I didn't even know there was that much of a museum up there and I enjoyed it a lot.
We then tried to go see the church were Vivaldi was baptized (which I had stumbled across the last time I was in Venice) but they were just closing up. So we got some lunch and headed to Isola San Giorgio with the intention of going up the bell tower to view Venice from above. However, there's this thing where most churches close for a few hours in the afternoon and we were right in that time. But we got some good views of Venice from the island before heading back to the main island. We then tried to go the Santa Maria Della Salute which was also closed. So...we wandered. And wandering in Venice is pretty fun. Eventually you end up back at the Grand Canal. We ended up back there at the Accademia bridge and then went back up towards the Rialto. We spent the rest of our day just wandering, seeing the picturesque-ness of Venice, and looking in the windows of every Murano glass shop we saw (if you've never seen Murano glass you should Google it. It's gorgeous).
We had a very early dinner at a pizzeria and then we were on the last train back from Venice to Milan. When we got back we had to pack everything up. I bought a suitcase here for Aaron to take back with him so we had to fit everything in it. Then this morning we got up early and I took Aaron back to the airport and he headed off to Atlanta and then he'll head to Detroit.
It was fantastic to Aaron here in general and really nice to have somebody to spend Thanksgiving with. Next visitors: my parents! Just two and a half weeks!
No comments:
Post a Comment