Tuesday 10th September
Milan:   https://www.airbnb.com.au/rooms/18615257?
Address: Via Crocefisso 25, Milano, Lombardia 20122, Italy
We made it to Milan! Albeit without one key member of the group 🙁
Flights for all were ok and we found our car transport easily too. Things, so far, were going very smoothly, more so than the lead up to this trip.
It takes about an hour to make the trip from the airport to the city centre and we made it to the apartment by about 9 am. We needed to wait until 9.30 am for access though so made a coffee stop around the corner.
The apartment is huge and well appointed and boasts a magnificent roof top terrace with great views across the city and to the famed Milan Duomo; a destination on our list for later today.
We all settled and showered before heading out to find somewhere for lunch and before our 3.30 pm Last Supper viewing. Lunch at Pane Vino ended up being a great find and, whilst we were the first and only ones there at noon, the place soon filled up with lots of what we assumed were locals given their familiarity with the staff.
It was a 25 min amble up to our 3.30 pm Last Supper viewing, made a bit slower by David’s choice of shoes and the need to stop and buy him a Sim card. We will be heading back to the SIM card place today to collect David’s jacket which he ‘cloaked’ there, inadvertently, for the night.
The Last Supper is one of the must see / do events when in Milan and is is located in a square beside Santa Maria delle Grazie. Strangely though I was far more impressed by the droll and disinterested, bordering on rude, guide that we were unlucky to strike for our 15 min session. I kept wondering how she could possibly have passed an interview with this kind of performance! That will be the memory I take away from this event!
From the Last Supper it was then on in search of shoes for David, not too hard in the fashion capital of the world but finding some basic active wear style shoes isn’t that easy here. Fluoro, statement, icon-type shoes abounded but we eventually managed to find a suitable pair at the Footlocker and so headed of, all now with more spring in our steps, towards the 14th Century Doumo, the Milan Cathedral.
I had purchased advance tickets that enabled us to view the main sections of the majestic Cathedral at times of our choosing. We decided given the late hour that we would just attempt the Duomo Terraces today, and leave other section to tomorrow, and thought it best to wait a bit until closer to sunset to make this roof top viewing. To fill in some time we headed across to the Piazza del Duomo for a bit of a rest and a drink.  It was a warm 28 degrees today and all the walking certainly helped to boost ones thirst. We tried to gain access to a roof top style Aperol Bar overlooking the Cathedral but the queue for a table was too long. So we headed back downstairs to a ground level bar where I had my first Aperol Spritz for the trip.
It was about 6 pm before we ventured up to the Duomo Terraces and this proved ideal timing as the crowds had thinned and the heat had waned. words cannot adequately describe the beauty and majesty of this magnificent Cathedral and the detail in the carvings of the marble roof buttresses. It is worth coming to Milan just to see this!
It was almost 7 pm by the time we came down from the terraces and we were all exhausted. So we made a B-line for home with a stop off at a restaurant along the way, Rossini, for dinner. This ended up being a great dining choice and it soon filled up as well.
There was just one more stop to buy milk and wine before we headed home where the boys enjoyed the roof top terrace and that bottle of wine!