I flew to Milan by myself. David was coming in from England. So even though I got there ahead of time, David had not taken red-eye flight to get to Milan and he had already adjusted to the time change. I got to the hotel first and took a nap for a few hours. There is nothing like that first nap when you arrive in Europe from an overnight flight.
Eventually, he prompted me to get up. The whole thing was helped by the fact that he had got some pastries to help me ease into consciousness. After I pulled myself together, we went to the Piazza del Duomo to see the center of Milan.
We started our tour by buying tickets to get into a broom closet of an elevator to the base of the roof. The Duomo di Milano is one of the few cathedrals that you can climb all over. Well, that's an exaggeration. You can walk all over the roof. And by the time you get to the top, you're pretty high up. There are non-stop carvings along the way. Every where you turn there's a gargoyle or statue - completely unique amongst the others. The top of the Duomo has all sorts of saints placed high on top and facing out towards the city. It is intensely serene to look at the saints as they monitor the encroaching modernity of high-fashion Milan.
David and I made it all the way to the top, but we felt raindrops, so took the stairs down and went inside the cathedral. The fun part abotu visiting cathedrals in Italy is that they are still quite well attended. We saw plenty of people praying or waiting to make confession.
One of the highlights in the cathedral is a statue of Saint Bartholomew, who was flayed alive. The statue has him wearing his skin like a shawl or a toga - and he is nothing but muscle and bone. It's very surreal. There were plenty of saints around the cathedral that had been stabbed with arrows or eviscerated and left for dead.
After the cathedral, we walked a bit around the piazza so I could get something to eat. However, we had missed lunch hour and barely anyone was serving anymore. So we went back to the hotel and I caught a nap before dinner.
And dinner that night was at a very well-known restaurant called Bice. It's apparently well attended by high fashion designers. We didn't see any that night. The meal was excellent and we were joined by two colleagues from Israel. We had the full experience, including Santo Vino with Biscotti for an aperitif.
When we got back to the hotel, I slept for something like 12 hours. I was woken by David getting ready. I said "I'll join you for breakfast and then shower when you head off ot the conference." He replied "I've already had breakfast. You slept through all of it."
Oh. Oops.
