Weekend back to the city

As I have mentioned, the work here is painless. Even when it’s a bit more physically demanding (like using a 20 inch sickle for a few hours straight), Luchana recognizes it and after she’ll let you work on something like berry picking. It’s quite nice. In addition, we’re only required to work three hours in the morning on Sat and then we have all of Sunday free.

This past weekend, after spending every waking hour here on the farm, a few of us were itching to get off of it for awhile. Even thought I had spent three nights in Milan, I really only saw the city for one day. So when Peter, Po, and Dree asked if I wanted to go with them to Milan for the afternoon on Sat, I jumped at the chance.

It was a bit overcast on Sat, threatening rain. But we ventured out anyway. The farm is about a 15 minute walk from the closest bus stop and from there the bus is a 20 minute ride to the metro station, which is another 20 minutes to Duomo, Milan central. It’s a decent venture, but again, completely worth the effort considering we all were feeling a bit stir crazy.

Po’s mother works for Delta so the lucky girl has traveled all over Europe. Plus (even though her parents are South American), she somehow has dual citizenship between Italy and the US (I can’t remember the details of how, I just remember being incredibly envious!). Therefore, she has been to Milan a few times before and the first thing she wanted to do was go inside the Duomo Cathedral. When I had gone to Duomo the weekend before, I saw the cathedral (obviously), but I had no idea you could go in!!

I was so glad I decided to go with them, it was really nice to travel with other people. The four of us had all only spent a couple of days together and so this day trip was a great chance to get to know one another. Plus, I would never have seen the inside of Duomo cathedral and I am sooo glad I have. It is amazing; the pictures do not do it justice.

The cathedral is the 3^rd largest cathedral in the world and it took nearly 500 years to complete (dependent upon definitions of “complete”) . It was / is breathtaking. It reminded me of stories my dad used to tell me about European cathedrals he visited when he was in Europe. The magnitude and details were overwhelming. According to Dree’s Lonely Planet Italy guide, the cathedral was built to fit 40,000 worshipers!! That’s more than Fenway can seat!

The stained glass windows are unlike any I have ever seen. The colors and details are just amazing. The four of us walked around in silence except for a few words spoken here and there because we all were so taken aback. Even Po, who has been there before, said she’s amazed every time she steps in. Despite that fact that I’ve been a horrible Catholic and haven’t even been in a church since my dad’s funeral (terrible, I know), one cant help but feel incredibly religious when you bless yourself with holy water in one of the most famous and largest cathedrals in the world.

Feeling badly about being a bad Catholic, I decided I needed to light a candle and so I lit one for my dad and my grandmother, both whom I would have told my experience in the cathedral to if they were still alive. As I sat in one of the pews, my eyes welled up in tears. The symbolism, actual images before me, and memories of my dad and grandmother hit me all at once. They were such proud Catholics and even though I used to dread going to church every Sunday when I was younger and even though I’m still not completely certain about what my religious beliefs truly are, Catholicism will always be a part of me through my dad and grandmother.

After a few minutes, I took a deep sigh and got up to join everyone else. I don’t think I’ll ever forget sitting there though. But (as many know) I have a horrific memory, so I took a picture to always remind me of the candle I lit for my dad and grandmother in Duomo’s Cathedral in Italy.

After the cathedral, we walked through Galleria Vittorio Emanuele (something else I didn’t do when I was there before). There was a lot of high fashion shopping, Louie Vutton and Prada, and the architecture was amazing. And of course, McDonalds had to be there as well. Dree wanted to go in and check it out to see if the pricing was different (which apparently it wasn’t), but they did serve alcoholic drinks and was by far the nicest McDonalds I’ve ever been in (all the times I eat fast food… ha!).

After the gallaria we walked around the city a bit. I bought a tiny Italian / English dictionary (which is amazing), and we bought some wine for when we got back to the farm. We stopped into this supposedly famous place, Peck, to get a drink and perhaps some food, but the prices were way out of league. (The wine cellar though was to die for…) Therefore we ended up at this adorable little outside café where we had cappuccinos and panini’s while we talked, people watched, and Dree narrowly missed getting shat on by a bird. No joke, this poor woman has been shit on by birds four different times in her life… that afternoon was almost five!

By this time we all had gotten to know each other quite well. Dree is definitely fun to explore around with, especially with her experience doing so, and Peter and Po although young (21 seems ages ago to me…), are definitely more mature than most their age. We all had a lot of fun together. Even though it was only a few hours, it was sooo nice (and very needed) to get off of the farm for a bit. As we were coming back the sun was beginning to set (around 8:30ish) and the walk from the bus stop to the farm was beautiful. We all were feeling refreshed (and thankful it never rained!) and we joined the rest of our wwoofers with our wine and drank and ate with them through the rest of the evening.

Sunday (after not going to bed until almost 2 am) I was up at 8. I’ve been sleeping better than I have in years here (aside from a few rare nighttime mosquito attacks), and I wake up every morning within minutes of my alarm clock. No word of a lie. If my alarm is set for 6:15, I wake up at 6:14. And if my alarm isn’t set (like it wasn’t for Sun), I still wake up before 6:30. Sunday though, I forced myself to go back to sleep because I knew I wasn’t going to be having an afternoon siesta. Dree and I had decided the night before that we were going to go back to Milan (its really the only place worth traveling to from the farm and it’s only 3 Euros round trip) to see a few more sights.

Around 11 we were on our way, both dressed in the few nicer clothes we each had as we were planning on heading to the Fashion District. To window shop, of course. We got to the center and on Saturday we had seen Gucci had its own café, so Dree had mentioned then that she wanted to come back and have a cappuccino. They were overpriced (although not as bad as Peck), but it was cute and fun and it was the only thing there that either of us could afford (by far!).

The “Fashion District” was next for more window shopping. So this year Milan was supposedly rated THE most fashionable city in the world, higher than Paris, LA, or New York. I honestly didn’t see why (ha, because I’m such an expert!). Not only was the “district” pretty unimpressive, the number of stores and variety of designers were also and the people watching was pathetic. When we both envisioned the fashion district we were expecting beautiful streets with lots of beautiful people in beautiful clothes. There was none of that. The people in general in Milan were far from my preconceived notions of Italian beauty, especially the women. Dree assured me the people are far more beautiful in Rome.

We did end up doing a little bit of shopping. Although it was the last thing I should have done since I am unemployed and my funds are limited (to say the least), I had to buy at least one scarf to somewhat fit into European style. I found a beautiful square scarf (very thin and light, perfect as an accessory) and a much larger, thicker, fuller one that will be perfect for when the nights cool down as it can be used as a wrap. Plus, how could I not buy something fashionable in Milan?

After that we went in search of the canals… which were incredibly disappointing. As we both had images of Venice like canals, the filthy, small, graffiti surrounded canals we found way outside of the city, were quite a let down. Especially since it was a mission to get out there! AND a mission to get out of there and find somewhere to eat! We both were starving and wanted to head more toward the city center to grab some food, but once we got there we literally sat down and the left without ordering two different places, in addition to all the places we looked at the menus and walked away from. They were all over priced and cookie cutter tourist traps. By the time we finally found somewhere to eat, we both were exhausted and famished, to the point that the minute we sat down we looked at each other and said simultaneously, “Beers.” Ha. We had been walking in the sun for soooo long that a beer, despite being in Italy, was so refreshing. I can’t even bring myself to say how ridiculously expensive they were…but they were worth it.

So we ate and drank our overpriced beers before heading back to the farm after a long day out. It was a long way home, but Dree’s Italian is great (she’s another lucky one with dual citizenship to Australia and Italy) and we spent the commute home practicing. Literally we were on the bus or metro and we would talk about the things around us, “Questa e una finestra…” (this is a window), “Lei ha molti pomodori…” (she has many tomatoes). I have a lot to learn.

All in all, it was a great weekend. I had originally wanted to just relax, have some alone time, and catch up on this blog, emails, and journaling, but being that this may be the only place that I will have as many other people around as I do (and lucky enough to have a few whom I get along with quite well), I realized I should take advantage of it. I’m sure in the next few months I will have more time alone than I know what to do with, so it was nice to get out with new friends.