4th week in Italy: Milan and Florence

This week was our last week in our apartment in Legnano, near Milan. I think one month was long enough to be in this place-it was nice overall but I was ready for a change. Nobody speaks much English and children are uncommon. I guess the birthrate in Italy is actually negative, more people are dying than are being born. So a lot of people were very amazed that we had 3 bambinos. We live only 40 minutes from Milan and still had not been into the city so we decided we better visit there before we leave. Milan now has a higher per-capita income than Britain, the saying goes for every church in Rome there is a bank in Milan. The people here seem to be very fashion conscious, and Milan is the international fashion capital.
We went to Milan’s cathedral, the city’s centerpiece, and the third largest church in Europe. “At 480 feet long and 280 feet wide, forested with 52 sequoia-sized pillars and more than 2,000 statues, the place can seat 10,000 worshipers.” We took the lift up to the rooftop to see the fancy spires and great views of the city and the Italian Alps. The church was amazing!

(Above: It seems all monuments in Europe are always under some form of renovation)
(Below: These are all from up on the roof of the Duomo)

Saturday morning we checked out of our apartment and headed south to Florence. Brett is taking all next week off work for a vacation. We checked into another apartment in Florence for 2 nights. We have found it is much easier with small children to rent an apartment for 2 days than a little hotel room. The apartment was also cheaper than a quadruple hotel room. We got to Florence around 2:30 checked in and then headed into the city to see Galleria dell’ Accademia. This was our first experience taking the children to a fine arts museum -- up until now we have avoided them, but decided to give it a try. Michelangelo’s most important works have been in the Accademia since 1873. The most famous of all dominates the collection: Michelangelo’s David. This colossal statue depicts the biblical hero who killed the giant Goliath (but I doubt he was naked when he did it!) We include a picture below... believe it or not - but droves of people stand around the base of this statue just gawking at it.

There was also a musical instrument museum here that the girls liked, they had many different instruments. There were also many fine paintings. The kids did pretty good and they learned a little too. After the museum we walked through a big outdoor market where guys were trying to sell me a real Italian leather jacket. We had a hard time understanding what makes Italian Cows (leather) so much more expensive than any others as the prices were a bit extreme.
Sunday morning we got up and got ready for church but when we found the church building we discovered they were having district conference that day and nobody was at the church, so we went back to our apartment and had our own lesson with the kids. In the afternoon we went downtown and walked along the Arno River and saw Ponte Vecchio-the oldest surviving bridge in the city. There are shops along the bridge and it is very pretty.

(Below: You can see shops built right onto the side of this bridge)We then walked over to the Duomo, or cathedral- it dominates the city with it’s enormous dome. To this day, no other building in the city stands taller than the dome. It was very pretty on the outside with white, green and pink marble. The inside of the cathedral was very big and open but not as impressive as the other cathedrals we have seen. Florence is an amazing city with all the major sites in a compact area so we were able to see a lot in a short time. There are many museums and churches and monuments. We found a few American tourists that we talked to but the funniest are the Asian tourists. The kids become movie stars as the Asians snap pictures while posing with the girls -- we had about 20 of them surrounding us taking pictures one at a time with the kids (see below), it was pretty funny! Addy is shy about it, but Alana thinks its great and flashes her big smile which just eggs them on even more. We should start charging them $ for each photo!So we end another fun week in Italy with one more action packed week ahead!