Milan

Ahhhh, Italia.  After Prague with its crappy train stations, crappy airports (not one single TV covering the British Open final round, argh!) and its large population of tourists and ne'er-do-wells, it was great to arrive in Italy.  We landed at Milan Bergamo airport, and took a short 45 minute bus to downtown and then a taxi to our hotel.  Milan does not show particularly well at night beyond the famous Duomo so we were unimpressed.  The next morning, however, we jumped on the first train to the airport to pick up Whitney's best friend Ali (short for Alison)!  

We were a little tired on the train, but luckily the kind gentleman in front of us slipped my camera out of my bag and snapped this picture. 

OK, we faked it.  Sue us.  In any case, obviously her flight was delayed and obviously we didn't check before we got on the train at 6am, but eventually we got her back to Milan.

After dropping her stuff at our hotel, we had our first real taste of Italy by checking out the Basillica San Eustorgio.  Amazingly, this also figured prominently in the book we're reading (Map of Bones) as it was the original resting place of the bones of the three wisemen from the 4th Century until 1108 when they were whisked off to Cologne.

The church itself was very cool, without a real transept, but rather just a long nave with chapels built off the sides.  The chapels themselves were very ornate and they led up to the old Shrine of the Magi, which is also in the shape of a church (like the Cologne golden shrine) except built out of marble rather than gold.

Random, but super cool after reading about it just days before.  After that we had our first italian meal - mmm pizza.  We walked around a little bit more and went over to La Scala, the famous opera house. 

Along the way we came upon this monument to Alison's initials (or former initials).

We took a tour of La Scala, which allowed us to peak inside the opera house itself...and sneak this picture.

Sorry for the eerie lighting - flash spooks the security.  Afterwards, we walked over to the Duomo.  At the Duomo, the ladies were barred entry because they were too scantily clad.

Of course, they didn't stop the people wearing athletic shorts, trash bag scarves or other inappropriate clothing that somehow fits within the letter of the law.  Whitney was able to roll down her shorts a bit and we slipped through leaving Ali outside.  The Milan Duomo is the third largest church in the world behind St. Peter's in Rome and a church in Seville, Spain.

It certainly feels big inside, but that is about all that it feels - big.  It's huge, but it lacks the warmth that St. Peter's and many of the other large cathedrals have, as well as most of the smaller churches.  The floor was very cool though. 

After seeing the inside, I came out and, as Ali said (always hip to the kids' lingo) "popped the top" and gave my shirt to Ali to wear over her dress, so that her shoulders were covered and she could gain entry to the church.   

It was embarrassing to sit shirtless with a moustache on the steps of the Duomo, but at least Ali got to see it.  I mean the church, not my bare chest.  Hilarious.  One other high point about the Duomo is that it's lit up fantastically at night.

We had issues taking pictures with three people of varying heights (nice way to avoid saying that Whitney is short, eh?), so some of the crouching and awkard hand placements, we'd ask that you ignore, thanks.  Anyway, the Duomo is definitely more impressive from the outside.

Also the shopping promenade between the Duomo and La Scala is pretty neat, and lit up well at night also.

All in all, Milan is pretty average.  If you have to fly in/out of Milan, you can probably build in a day to see the sights here (see Duomo, La Scala and at least one other church if you can), but as we learned later, you are as close to Como as you are to Milan when you fly into Malpensa airport, so might as well just stay in Como.  Either way...

For all the photos from Milan:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mchamberlain22/MilanItaly

Slept in the next day then hit the train station.  This might be the best picture we have from the whole trip.  It really captures our Summer of George.  Nice work by the photographer Ali.

Next stop...

Parma

Parma is the Italy that everyone is hoping for.  It is amazing.  Tiny little streets, great food, really great food, very very great food, good wine, great food, and a few beautiful old churches.  The town oozes history without having actual "sights" that you need to see, so you are free to just wander and eat and drink your way through the day.  Quite awesome.

We stopped into the tourist office and found the last triple room in all of Parma in a pretty sweet hotel.  Of course all of these hotels have trouble fitting the three of us and all our backpacks into their tiny elevators.

Don't you just want to reach out and touch that moustache?  After checking in we immediately set out in search of Parma ham and Parmagian cheese.  We didn't have to go far.

This place was amazing, and we bought some slices of top quality prosciutto and a block of Parmesan cheese and ended up eating it just off one of the main blocks in town. 

Excellent.  We then wandered around town and came across the Parma Cathedral.

 

It was awesome and we previously had no idea it existed.  Consecrated in 1116, this thing is oooooold.  But totally awesome.  The murals on the ceiling and walls made it one of our favorites in all of Europe.

And who has ever heard of this church?

Honestly it was amazing, and even had some cool Lions in front.

Afterward we got back to the important job of eating.  This was probably my favorite meal in all of Europe.

Bottom left, those are fried pieces of dough that you eat with olive oil and the parma prosciutto ham.  It honestly tasted amazing.  Perhaps in a daze from the fried dough and ham mix, Whitney tried to drink olive oil straight out of her glass.

Ok, this is a re-enactment, but the olive oil bottle looked so much like a wine bottle, and we'd already put away a few bottles of said wine (Pingnoletto - a sparkling white which was great), so I don't think anybody can blame her.  Plus the olive oil did tase good enough to drink.  Afterwards, we snapped this picture in front of the 13th century Governor's Palace.

I love the night shots.  The next day the girls went shopping while I was forced to do the laundry. Whitney is wearing her new dress purchased the day before in Parma - cute, eh?

Not sure how this deal was struck but whatever.  Parma was great, and I suggest that anyone who is traveling around Italy make time to stop in for a day or two.  Oh that Parma ham...

For all the Parma pics:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mchamberlain22/ParmaItaly

After shopping and laundry were finished, we walked back to the train station and set out for...

 

Bologna

The entire reason for the Italian trip, and the reason Ali was in Europe in the first place, was because Ali had a Music Conference (she's a baller professor with a doctorate in music) in Bologna that she was attending.  She had reservations already booked in Bologna, so we didn't have to stop in at the tourist office but could just stroll to the hotel.  We checked in and headed up to our room to find...

LUXURY!  LUXURY!  LUXURY!  That's right, we're doing the "luxury dance" for the first time in Ali's presence.  Essentially, this dance is performed any time the bedroom is even reasonably well appointed and there are clean towels in the bathroom.  It's nice to have low expectations on these trips.

After checking in to the hotel, which in all seriousness was pretty nice, we thought it would be wise to get Ali set up at her conference before starting our search for the perfect pasta Bolognese (which we found).  The conference was hosted by the University of Bologna which is the oldest in Europe at 1106 (or so).  Dante studied there.  Cool.  The hallways are even oozing with art and history.

We checked her in found out where we needed to be, then set out to explore Bologna, which turned out to be a great city.

The first thing to note about Bologna are the porticoes.  Nearly every single street has these ornately covered sidewalks.  It's really pretty cool.  It's not as if this is the hottest city in Italy and has a supernatural need for covered sidewalks, but for some reason they are found here and nowhere else.  Apparently, they found their population skyrocketing following the return of soldiers from a war (can't say which because Wikipedia was no use in jogging my memory) and the cheapest way was to build out their current homes over the sidewalk and just add a column to support the additional build out.  Multiply this by alot and the city had a good start for porticoes.  After that, I suppose it became the standard achitectural style and the number of porticoes skyrocketed.  Courtyards are enhanced as well.

 

Besides porticoes, the churches here are also remarkable.  First of all, should mention the Basilica of Saint Petronio, the patron saint of Bologna and commercial real estate CDO's.

The church is fantastic both inside and out and its unique exterior is due to the fact that plans were made to build the basilica even larger than St. Peter's in Rome (this is a huge basilica), but when the Pope got wind he usurped all the funds and built a palace next door, both stealing the money and space they needed to finish the construction plans.  Thus, the front facade which was going to be ornate marble is simple brick.  Unique and cool if you ask me.  Here's a photo comparing the plans on right with the actual on left.

I took that picture holding up a postcard of the real building against a model they had inside.  Kinda cool, right?  Ok, little blurry, but good attempt I think.  The inside is phenomenal, especially the chapel of San Petronio (on right).

Really a great church.  We checked out a number of others, but the other one that I'll show here is the Church of San Domenico, built in 1240.

Inside, the church holds the remains of Sant Domenico, the founder of the Dominicans.

The ornate mausoleum includes the left statue that was crafted by Michelangelo.  Awesome.

Okay, switching from the divine to the secular, well actually I think this might still qualify as divine - eating and drinking are fantastic in Bologna -- I repeat fantastic!  We found this out the hard/easy way, when we were covered in sweat, carrying our backpacks and we asked the front deskman at out hotel for a recommendation for a good restaurant that would have Bolognese sauce.  He pointed a place out on the map and told us the name "Fabio" and didn't mention anything else.  So we go over there our first night not sure what to expect, but assuming that its some pretty good, pretty cheap place that we can easily find.  Well here's a picture of it.

Absolutely no signage with a locked door and metal grate over the windows and door.  We walked past it back and forth then finally realized this was a restaurant.  We tried the door, saw that it was locked and thought it was closed.  But we looked in and there was a table eating.  Since we'd walked a pretty long way, we decided to ring the doorbell.  Anyway, a young waiter comes to the window, looks us over and then gives us the "uno momento" motion and walks off.  2 minutes later the owner comes, looks us over and thinks about whether to let us in.  Apparently this is like the toughest door in all of Europe.  Luckily I was wearing an all entry admission pass...

...on my upper lip.  Once again the moustache comes through for us.  Yes!  So he unlocks the door, invites us in, and we sit down and no one speaks any English and they don't give us any menus.  We communicate that we want only primi (pasta) and no secondi (meat course) because we all agreed we weren't that hungy.  But they ask if we want antipasti, and so we say yes assuming we'll get a plate of meats, cheeses and veggies.  Nope.

They bring out about 10 plates of antipasti and stack them all over eachother because their is not even room on the table.  I'm talking grilled eggplant, huge balls of mozzarella, 4 different spreads, meatballs, peppers, asparagus, and many others that I can't even remember. We couldn't stop laughing.  The kicker is that each dish was amazing.  Now firmly understanding that we were going to be eating alot of great food that night, the pasta arrived.  It looked amazing obviously... 

To the bottom of the plate is the pasta Bolognese, a traditional meat sauce with no tomatoes.  It was without a doubt the best Bolognese any of us had ever had.  Unfortunately, Alison's husband Amit couldn't make the trip to Italy and he is a huge Bolognese fan.  In his honor, I saved and didn't eat a bite of my pasta, sort of like when rappers pour out a fifth of Hennessy for one of their fallen homies.

It was a sacrifice, but it was also a touching moment for all of us, helping us realize how much we missed Amit and making us recognize how lucky we were just to be able to eat such wonderful pasta.  When desert came it was even more ridiculous as they just brought entire cakes and pies and huge bowls of ice cream (with churn still in bowl) and left them on our table (pic shows only about half of what was on the table). 

We didn't know what we were and were not supposed to eat, so we just had some of everything, assuming that nobody was watching us that closely anyway.  It was an amazing meal and when the bill came we decided we didn't care what it cost.  It ended up not being too bad afterall, but so funny that the dude at the hotel would recommend this to three backpackers -- way out of the budget of most backpackers, but we were so glad that he sent us there. 

The day after this meal (I think we probably skipped breakfast because we were too full), Ali had to giver her presentation.  Here she is holding court in front of her poster.

Kinda like a science fair for grownups, but pretty cool.  While she was edumacating the world on something or other, I was eating pizza, glorious pizza.

Very similar to Joe's Pizza back home, except for the Coke Zero.  Coke Zero by the way, is HUGE over here.  Nearly every little restaurant or bodega has it, as do all the chains like McDonalds, etc.  It's not really catching on in NY all that strong - but it is here.  And it should be - Coke Zero is great.  Call your local cable company and tell them you want Coke Zero.  Or write your Congressman.  Or whatever.  In any case, when Ali was done, she and Whitney went off and did their own stuff and I hit the internet cafe to update the blog.

Those places are pretty awful, filled with pretty creepy crowds oftentimes.  To understand how bad they are, I would say that with my moustache I was about average on the creepiness level -- that's not so good.  After internet time, I joined Whitney and Ali to see one of the many concerts put on by chorus groups that are attending the conference.

This chorus was a South African boys choir that was pretty amazing.  It was unfortunate that I was late however, because I had to walk into this boys' concert all by myself with my moustache flowing.  I saw the security guys tense up, and though I may have only imagined it, I thought I heard over his walkie-talkie "Giuseppe.  Moustache at 4 o'clock.  Stay alert."

There was also a Stanley Kubrick film festival in the Piazza Maggiore (just outside Basilica San Petronio - King of Orrick and patron saint of legal negotiations).

They were playing one Kubrick film every night in its original language with italian subtitles.  We saw the last few minutes of Paths of Glory one night and watched Spartacus almost in its entirety.

We left with about a half hour left because we couldn't stand the smoke -- EVERYONE was smoking and it was ridiculous.  Truth.com needs to give up making ads in the US and just focus on Europe - it would be so much more rewarding.  In the US, they're already cutting pretty close to the bone - the only folks who smoke do so ignoring all the info and disdain that they endure in the States and still smoke because they love it.  Whereas here, everyone smokes just because its easier than not smoking.  Unreal.

Bologna is an awesome city and even has a few towers from the middle ages still standing.  We walked up and took a look down...

out...

...and that was pretty much Bologna.  The city cannot be missed.  Great young population, excellent food and tremendous history.  Every bit as cool as Florence, just no art museums.  We had a good time, and I particularly enjoyed the Basilica San Petronio.  Here's one last pic with me and the patron saint of long conference calls.

For all the photos from Bologna, click here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mchamberlain22/BolognaItaly

 

Next we took the train to Verona, the beautiful setting for Romeo and Juliet...

...and it stunk.  We couldn't really get a hotel room, the town was full of tourists and it just seemed awful all around.  We looked at our train schedule and found there was only one other city besides Bologna that we could get to from Verona.  Well, we grabbed the biggest Doner Kebabs of all time (only good thing about Verona - I actually think they were featured in Act II of Romeo and Juliet - If I remember correctly the Capulets were really into these Kebab sandwiches) and hopped on the train to...

 

Bolzano

You are probably asking "Where the heck is Bolzano?"  Well, I have no idea.  The guidebook said it was near the Austrian border and had a cool mixed Austrian/Italian culture.  That was exactly what we found and it was great.  Very few tourists, cool mountains, hearty Austrian food and a great church in the center of town.

There was also one of the coolest surprises we had on our trip.

Okay, totally lame picture, but we couldn't take pictures at the museum.  But in Bolzano (I know - where?), they have Otzi the Iceman, which was the 5000 yr old man that was found perfectly preserved in the ice in like 1991.  You probably remember hearing about it on the news and seeing some lame show on A&E.  Well fact is that its really cool and the museum display is really well done.  They have gone all CSI and recreated the circumstances under which he died.  In actuality it wasn't that hard, because he had been shot in the shoulder by an arrow (they have re-enacted the fight though, which is neat - first he gets in a knife fight where he gets cut on his hand then retreats from the fight and gets shot in the back as he is climbing the hill - then he apparently falls into a huge crevasse never to be heard from for 5000 yrs).  At the time, he was wearing leather shoes, leather pants (maybe he was into the alternative club scene?) and carrying a quiver of arrows, a bow, and an axe.  All of this is perfectly preserved.  As is his body - he's got moist skin and if you didn't know better you might think its a dead body from 50 yrs ago (I guess).  It's crazy.  Anyway, we were just shocked that this wasn't in Rome or Florence or some other actual city that people know exists (I consider our discovery of Bolzano to be similar to Bolzano's discovery of the iceman -- each was about as unlikely as the other).

But there was also good food and Austrian beer in Bolzano.

And just generally a nice setting to relax and see some different culture.

We even had a drink and caught a pretty good band playing English/Italian rock in a cool piazza (band is set up on right of this picture - we sat across at a separate bar, so we could hear the band but still talk to eachother).

There was also a cool little park that we killed some time in for a bit before our train out the next day. 

You would not believe the force you get going on this thing -- it was way more intense than it looks.  So that was Bolzano -- pretty great.  Only downside was that they didn't have a triple hotel room available, so I stayed by myself next door to the ladies, but they gave us the rate for the two rooms as if it was the rate for one triple, so pretty good deal. 

Click here for the Bolzano photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mchamberlain22/BolzanoItaly

 

After that, we hopped the train to Austria - cool, eh?

 

Innsbruck

We went to Interlaken, Switzerland earlier in the trip and the entire time, Whitney was calling it Innsbruck.  So I thought it would just be easier to take her to Innsbruck than to try to teach her where we actually went in Switzerland.  She was going to tell people we went to Innsbruck either way, now at least it will be true.  Also, Ali had never been to Austria and it seemed like the perfect interval before heading to Lake Como.  It was nice - kinda lame, but cozy and beautiful.

Speaking of beautiful, check out this couple.  Wasn't sure if you noticed that the moustache was shaved off at the end of Bologna, but it was nice to be back to (almost) normal sans moustache.

Once again the food was good and heavy with great beer and cool churches (as I said before, this sequence is not sacrilege because of the way I feel about beer).

There's also a pretty cool "Golden House" (after which nearly every restaurant at which we ate was named after - wow good use of "after/at which" right?):

During the day, we took a funicular halfway up the mountain to do a little hiking.

Whitney and I re-lived her slide ride from Murren (oh was that amazing), but she knew better than trying it again.

Neither the views nor the slide were as grand as Switzerland, but at least the weather was great.  After our hiking, we got lost trying to find the next attraction, but finally took the bus back to the top of the mountain, so we could take the funicular back down to the...

That's right, the Alpenzoo, which honors all of the best animals of the Austrian Alps.

Apparently the beaver is like number one, because this guy was front and center.  We also saw all kinds of antelope, wolves, moose and a variety of bears.  They had a light brown one and a dark one.  Here's the light one.

In addition to bears, they also had a variety of beers.  They had a light brown one and a dark one.  Here are both.

After a few of these beers, I took a nap in the dirt and the girls took this picture behind me while I napped, apparently making fun of how big I was getting after drinking all the heavy, dark beers.   I think I look fine below.

Well that was essentially Innsbruck - fun but lame.  We hopped the train to Lake Como the next day for a predictably beautiful train ride.

We stopped in Zurich as well, which was cool to show Ali around a little bit.  I think we may have grabbed McDonald's to keep Ali's streak alive of eating MickeyD's at least once on each European vacation.  Afterwards on the train to Como, the girls scrounged all the 1 cent and 2 cent and 5 cent pieces together to try to buy a snack.

They were ecstatic as you can imagine when they succeeded in purchasing a bag of chips.

The snack salesman not so much, as it took 20 minutes to count out the 60 centimes.  A few more miles of beautiful scenery and we'd be there.

 

For all the photos from Innsbruck, click here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mchamberlain22/InnsbruckAustria

 

We finally made it to Como and decided that our base of operations should be Bellagio, so we hopped the little commuter bus for the hour trip along the rim of the lake.  Scary and stinky ride with our bags taking up three seats and furious Italians cursing loudly and asking (in English) whose bags are these?  We pretended like we didn't know and just tried to ignore the scene we'd created.  I even put on my headphones and let the girls fend for themselves (quite the gentleman).  But after the hour of winding and weaving, we finally arrived in...

 

Bellagio

One thing you should know about Lake Como - George Clooney is a lot funnier on film.  In person, he's kind of a bore and his age is really showing.  Okay, so we didn't see George Clooney, but you could definitely tell why he and other celebrities love this area.

It is beautiful.  We arrived with a tentative reservation for a hotel that didn't have a view but looked relatively clean on-line.  We weren't that enthusiastic, so I decided to knock on hotel doors and check availability.  The first three were all full, but on the third we struck the jackpot!

That's the view from our room.  Oh yeah, we broke out the luxury dance something fierce.  And the best thing wasn't even the view (which was amazing).  It was that we also had free access to the Bellagio Sports Club, which was a pool and tennis club for exclusive members like us.

It was great to just relax after all of our sightseeing and running around.  They had the best lounge chairs we've ever seen, because they even had an adjustable shade that you could manipulate to keep the sun off your face if you wanted to read or were getting a burn.

Totally cool, right?  One day, I played soccer with a bunch of local kids - it was me and a 35yr old German guy against 15 little Italians.  They had speed and ability, but we were big and that helped.  Here's a picture of me just kicking the ball around.

The two tennis courts were covered in artificial grass, probably great for tennis but also good for soccer.  They had goals set up on each end and they'd take down the tennis nets to give the kids a full soccer field to play on.  This place also had a good bar and a great pizza restaurant.  It was basically heaven, even with this woman and her she-mullet.

She definitely saw Whitney taking a picture of her...oops.  We loved the Sporting Club, but the one downside was that they required everyone to wear swim caps in the pool (seriously).

Looking cool babe! Speaking of cool, they also had a trampoline - super sweet.

What a doofus.  In any case, we had a great time relaxing at the Bellagio Sporting Club and were sad each afternoon when we had to leave, even though we always had a good time in town.  The little village of Bellagio is a beautiful little grid of streets parallel and perpendicular to the lake, with restaurants and hotels lining the waterfront and then some restaurants and shops lining the interior streets that climb up the hill as well.  Our Hotel du Lac was right on the waterfront looking out.

As we encountered throughout Europe, the streets were not big enough for cars and pedestrians, as the girls show.

Each night we'd grab a drink and then dinner and walk around a bit by the waterfront.  It was great and we had alot of fun.

Here's the view from our hotel in the morning.

Really amazing - a complete panorama of the lake.  We just really enjoyed Bellagio and were sad to leave.  Rather than go to Milan the night before our flight, we found out that we could take a train straight from the town of Como, which was just around the lakefront from Bellagio.  We thought it would be lame but were happy to find that it was actually pretty cool.  See for yourself...

Very similar to Bellagio, except a little bigger.  I left the girls with the bags at a little outdoor cafe by the water and went in search of accomodations.  I thought they got the better end of the deal as I walked all over trying to find a hotel, but it turns out they spent nearly the entire time fighting pigeons.  The pigeons would literally fly onto the table for nuts/chips/etc. and knock over glasses and plates.  It was insane.  Whitney and Ali were both throwing wadded up napkins at the pigeons (along with an 8yr old boy), and apparently Whitney was quite the pigeon slayer.  Anyway, I couldn't find anything but a really nice hotel, but since it was the last night we were okay splurging at the Palace Hotel.

We even got a room on the front that was supposed to have a view of the lake.

Uh, nope - sorry.  That is not a view.  But whatever.  We went out for one last dinner in Europe and walked around a bit. 

Dinner was pretty solid and then we went to bed for last night in Europe (for that trip).  In the morning we hopped on the train to the airport and that's all she wrote.

For all the photos from Lake Como/Bellagio, click here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mchamberlain22/LakeComoItaly

 

Brief Summary

We had a great time throughout this two month "epic journey" through Europe.  The first two weeks on the cruise with Bill, Darlene, Sara and David were awesome and it was great to finish off with two weeks with Ali.  In between we saw alot of great stuff and had a tremendous time as well. 

The final tally:

54 days, 32 cities and 13 countries.  Lotta trains, planes, boats and automobiles.  It was awesome, but a touch hectic and it got old to be packing or unpacking nearly every day.  We were happy to return to the States and continue our Summer of George in our own country for a bit.  

To be continued...