Milan

Milan. In August. Not our best idea.

With Florence, Rome and Lake Como in the bag, we figured we'd close up our Italy adventures with a trip to Milan. Our thinking was that after visiting Milan, we'd have seen most of Italy and will be able to focus future Europe travels (if ever and whenever that may be) to other countries.

We were able to get the hotel using our Starwood points, and the train ride isn't too long, so we got everything booked up and ready to go... and then found out from Ryan's co-worker, who is from Italy, that Milan kind of shuts down in August. Apparently all the locals just close up shop and take off for the month... how nice. Luckily, most of the sights we were going to see remain open during this city-wide holiday. Unfortunately, all the restaurants we were hoping to go to do not. Oh well, c'est la vie. We're still glad we went.

In case you think I'm exaggerating about the place being a ghost town, here's a picture to prove it.

We started our day walking down to the main city center, passing the Teatro alla Scalla first. This is one of the most famous opera houses in the world.

Leonardo da Vinci's statue in Piazza della Scala

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele - shops and restaurants, amazing architecture

Right outside the Galleria is the Duomo - this was a pretty incredible sight to see in person. There are over 2,000 statues on it.

The second we walk into any church, Westin b-lines it for the candles and so badly wants to blow them out.

The crypt

Of course, you can't go to Milan without doing some shopping. This is a high-end department store (similar to our Saks Fifth Ave) that was pretty fun (for me) to walk around and daydream of actually shopping there.

Now this is my kind of museum!

At the bottom level of this fancy, shmancy department store was the nicest market I've ever walked through. I literally wanted to buy everything just because it looked so nice and was displayed immaculately.

We continued down Corso Vittorio Emanuele (a main street devoted to shopping and restaurants), and found ourselves at the Disney store - a little taste of home.

That afternoon we walked to Santa Maria della Grazie to see The Last Supper. The painting is on a wall through the building on the left and the church is the building on the right. Not really impressive from the outside, but the church was beautiful inside and the Last Supper was definitely worth seeing.

You can only see the Last Supper with a reservation, and they only let 25 people in at a time. You also have to go through two rooms that are sealed closed when you pass through, in order to limit the amount of humidity that gets into the room where the Last Supper is. They have this replica outside of the actual room for people to take pictures with.

Inside the church

After viewing the Last Supper, it was off to Castello Sforzesco - the main tower is under reconstruction, so they put this lovely replica up with a huge soccer advertisement blocking the actual castle picture. Nice.

View of the Arco della Pace from the back of the castle

In front of the castle was a huge fountain that many people were cooling off in. We decided to let Westin have a go at it... until he was kicked out by the police. Wading in fountains is apparently frowned upon.

Day two was a little less eventful. We had hit most of the sites on Saturday, so we spent Sunday walking around the high-end area of Milan, and then went to a park and aquarium for W.

Via della Spiga (the high-end couture shops)... but all closed up for holiday.

It was still fun to look inside the store windows of Dolce & Gabanna, Prada, Valentino, and the likes. This is Valentino's home store. 

In the park behind the castle is a free aquarium that provided a little relief from the heat and gave Westin something fun to explore. 

We headed back to Zug Sunday night

And grabbed one more gelato at our favorite place - Venchi