Switzerland and Northern Italy 2018-2019

European Adventures:

Switzerland and Northern Italy, 2018-2019

The train to Milan was about 2 hours, nice and fast and easy, and we walked to our hotel and checked in. We took the subway to Il Duomo and got pizza and prosciutto crackers and chocolate at a little candy/grocery store, then climbed to the top of the cathedral. This was dramatically easier than the tower in Bologna: First of all this was 250 steps total, with a big landing/pause in the middle, as opposed to 400+ in one go in bologna, but these steps were also stone and even and not stressful at all. Once at the top, it was incredible being right on the roof among the gargoyles and flying buttresses—I had never been in a spot like this before, and Marcus in particular loved being right on the sloping slate roof and said it was his favorite thing of the entire trip.

When we came down we basically skipped the church interior, dipping in just to see it and then going briefly to the ruins in the basement of 4th-6th c. churches and tombs. From there we took the subway to dinner, at a place called Sabatini, getting plain pasta for the girls, spaghetti with mixed seafood under a pizza crust, anchovy pizza, and risotto with shrimp and artichokes, all of which was very good. We walked from there to Tera gelato for more gelato, and then we took a streetcar home.

On our last day in Italy, we took the subway back to Il Duomo (I was kind of wishing we could go back up—the perspective was really unique, and I wondered what it would look like at a different time of day/type of weather) because there was supposedly a great place near there that sells panzerotti. Basically that is fried dough (the kind from street fairs, just without the powdered sugar) folded over a savory filling (tomato sauce and prosciutto or ricotta and spinach). Robert adored it. I find fried dough one of the most unappetizing foods ever, so I only had a tiny taste, but I can appreciate why this is popular—if you don’t hate fried dough, I think it was a compelling combination. Marcus and Helen shared a breakfast slice of pizza with capers, I had an onion foccacia, and Samantha had a cannoli. Next door was a chocolate place that we also ducked into. Robert had an espresso with hazelnut cream, cocoa powder, and chopped hazelnuts. We all split an order of Nutella pancakes (adorable silver dollar size folded around Nutella, very chewy and delicious) and a crepe with milk chocolate inside, which they served in an ice cream cone. Helen was thrilled with the cone. We used the bathroom in the basement for multiple children (bathroom plus diaper change), and we marveled once more over the dramatically terrible bathrooms we’d encountered all over Italy—never mind no changing tables, there was virtually always no soap and no towel, usually no toilet paper, and often no toilet seat. I found this a bit mystifying, and I hadn’t been ready for it.

From there we took the subway to the Leonardo da Vinci Museum of Science and Industry. The museum has a huge collection of models of things that Leonardo designed, and they display the models with enlarged reproductions of his original plans/sketches behind them. These were very neat and the kids loved them. Then the museum also has all sorts of other, more modern things—basically Things Leonardo Would’ve Thought Were Cool.

The museum is huge, completely labyrinthine, and we saw far less than half of it, but there was a large glue exhibit (talking about adhesives in cheese rind, chewing gum, etc., and also showing the process of making a skateboard, with plywood and glue, which was neat for Marcus because he did that this summer), a big light bulb exhibit (Robert was in heaven), and then a huge hanger full of steam engines and another of planes and ships and then another of motorcycles and a “cinemobile,” a 1920s Van retrofitted in the 1940s with speakers and a movie projector.

Helen had a toddler guide to the museum that asked her to find three objects—the train with the biggest wheels, a plane with an Italian flag on its tail, and a “school ship” (giant schooner the navy had used as a training vessel). She got into doing it, and Samantha of course loved helping her and checking them off for her. Then Samantha wanted to do the kids’ guide to the museum, which asked her to find five objects and answer questions about them (an early telephone, a space suit, a lab bench a Nobel prize winner used, an iron smelting furnace, and something else), and she worked hard to do these too. In the middle we left to go get lunch—a place just a block away which was a meat place that had rare steak Florentine with artichokes and a lovely juicy veal cutlet with tomato and basil. They were very friendly and brought us free meatballs and anise cookies too, and we ate amidst businessmen in suits.

Back in the museum, Marcus had run out of steam and sat on a bench reading while I nursed Helen into a nap and Robert took Samantha to track down her last item. We left at 5:10 as apparently the museum closed at 5:00 but no one had particularly told us or bothered to make any announcements.

From there we walked a short distance to Sforza castle, and while we couldn’t go inside at this hour, we walked around the grounds and looked at the moat, towers, fountains, etc. before killing half an hour before restaurants open in a sporting goods store and then taking the subway back toward our hotel and having dinner at a classic southern (Pugliese) restaurant. We had a delicious antipasto bar (which Helen ate every last bit of eggplant from), pasta with beans, and braised beef, and then we bought some snacks at the supermarket on the corner to help tide us over through our flight the next day.

Our final morning in Italy started early, and we walked to the train station, took the special train to the airport, and spent a bit of time in one of the nice lounges before our flight took off. What a great trip!