Milan

We left Levanto the following day by train on our way to Stresa. But we were going to stop in Milan for the afternoon on the way - for a chance to explore another great Italian city. The train ride wasn’t too long and as we arrived in Milan we were greeted with the coolest train station we’ve seen so far. It was massive and all covered by an arching roof. We learned that Mussolini built the train station and we got to see examples of Facist architecture right as we arrived. It was interesting to see how the facists really wanted to build the New Roman Empire - the architecture reflected this quite a bit.

The plan was to leave our bags at the train station - but you were only allowed to leave one 20kg bag. Both of ours, of course, were just a few kilos over that - which spurred us to finally send a few things home that we just didn’t need any longer. So thanks to Post Italia and some translation assistance from Monica, we shed about 4-5kg each off our bags and happily left our bags in lockers in the train station and headed out to explore the city.

We explored the Piazza del Duomo - or big square in the middle of the city right in front of the cathedral. The cathedral was simply massive. Monica told us that this was one of the four largest cathedrals in the world, dwarfed only by St. Peters in Rome, St. Pauls in London, and one more we could not remember. Anyway, after exploring the inside of the cathedral we got to take an elevator to the roof of the cathedral and walk around. This was cool - we got to see the massive flying buttresses and other parts of the building up close as well as take in some amazing views of Milan.

We spent the rest of our afternoon exploring the famous malls and shopping areas in Milan’s center. They were neat but Kristen and I aren’t quite the Prada and Louis type - so we just enjoyed them from the windows. Our wallets were relieved :-).

We collected our bags and then boarded a train that night for the last piece of our journey to Stresa.