Milan, Italy July 2 - 4, 2015, The City

 

Milan, Italy July 2 - 4, 2015, The City

Now that I am off the boat, hopefully, I can catch up on my posts fairly rapidly. I just left Lisbon, Portugal but have 2 weeks of travels to tell you about. The first of which is Milano, Italy.

I have to say, the things that I am experiencing the most here as a tourist are the people, the food and the sites.  But also there is the factor of the experience itself. Sometimes being somewhere sets the mood. I will talk about all of these elements of travel in my blog about Milano, Italy.

 

If you look hard, in the back of the picture in the center is a very small blue pickup truck. These were very common a long time ago when I was in Europe but not so much anymore. It reminds me that things change. Like when we used to have black and white TV's. They are extinct now. As this little truck will be in probably a couple of years.

This was kinda fun! A solar motarized bike! Don't see those every day!

 

So, why a shoe? Actually, it is a giant shoe in a chocolatier. The chocolatier is called Baci. It looked interesting from the outside, with the giant "chocolate" shoe in the window, and when I went in I recognized the chocolates! They are the chocolates that they sell in Costco in the large plastic containers! Here is where they come from! Milano!

Today I took the on and off bus to tour the city. I love the architecture here in Milan. There was actually a law here that no 2 balconies could be alike!

There are 2 very beautiful parks,

a beautiful castle,

the Leonardo di Vinci "The Last Supper" painting, city arches,
and of course, this time of year, HEAT!!

I think it was around 88 degrees today with super high humidity.  I noticed, at the end of the day, that the trash bins were full of empty water bottles! Lots of gelato was sold today!

and lots of people played in the city fountains!

The on and off bus had the added advantage of having a continual breeze as we drove around looking at the sites.

 
There were 3 routes that these buses took and after taking 2 of the routes I figures I had pretty much seen the major sites of the city and got off at the town square.

I didn't actually get a great picture of the square but there are longs rows of buildings on 2 sides, a major building in the center and shops and cafes on the 4th side. Since it was around 1:00 I decided to look for a place for lunch.

I found this little pizzeria called "7's GIQ". I ordered a ham, mushroom and cheese slice of pizza and a coke. It was the most fabulous pizza!!

There was actually only 1 table to sit down at. The rest were spots at a stand up bar kind of thing that you had to stand and eat with a little table/bar to put your food on. An Asian woman and her daughter were sitting at the only table there. I asked to sit at one of the other 2 seats that were available and shortly later they left and I moved to the seat that I could have a better look at the plaza. 

A guy came over and asked if he could have one of the other 3 seats at the table. I said, "Sure!"  This is when I met Marcelo from Brazil.  He is a university student studying environmental engineering but since the semester was over, he was traveling. We got to talking and I found out that he also went to Expo 2015 yesterday!

I will do a whole separate blog about Expo 2015, but when you first enter the Expo, the first booth is about "going green".

Marcelo and I were discussing how this pavilion cleverly showed a display of a hanging garden concept where plant pockets were created into some kind of material and the plants and soil were put in these pockets and they hung vertically, like a wall, and a drip system was connected to it so the water ran down the wall and watered the plants. Also, these vertical plants could be hung on the outside of the building to help to keep the building cool and Marcelo said that the incline, off the side of the building, can be tilted to add ventilation to the backside of the plants - again, helping to cool the building.

 

 

I was also telling Marcelo about the pavilion put on by the country Oman. They have a very arid climate so that have had aqueducts for over 2,000 years to help water the crops in their county.

Well, now they have a new innovation. They apparently also have a lot of fog and have found a way to harvest the fog for more water! Isn't that clever!!!
 
I asked Marcelo what sights in Milano that he felt were really worth seeing and he said the castle was well worth the time so I decided to check it out.

So, heading to the castle there is a large fountain out in front and guess what? It was a major attraction on this hot day! There were people sitting on the edge of the fountain and taking water to cool themselves but also there were children actually in the fountain playing in the water.

The castle front is a massive brick wall that forms a courtyard around the castle.

Look at the size of these grounds!

I love this picture of the entrance with the iron gate above.

Look at how pretty these ceilings are.

And these sculptures

I am not sure what this little nook was for originally but these girls are making good use of it now.

And coming out the other side,

Look at this wonderful surprise!!  There was music playing at a stage in the distance, people lying on the grass visiting and eating their gelatos and sparkling lemonade.

What a wonderful way to spend the afternoon in Milano!