Milan... City of sWANK...

Yesterday I was a bitter bitter little boy...
Now I'm a happy little camper!!
:-)

We got into Milan yesterday at about 2pm and spent bout 40mins walking around the train station looking for the tourist info desk which is in the station.
There is a tiny little sign over an archway telling you where to go which you'd miss if you blinked. The lady in at the info desk said that the station admin wouldn't let them put any bigger signage or signs pointing the way. oh well... no biggy...

Got to Hotel Eva with no probs, checked in and asked the reception guy (Patrick - very helpful and friendly) to see if he could call and book us in to see The Last Supper. Dan "BoyWonder" Gammon had warned me that we'd have to book to see it, so we were prepared... unfortunately Patrick couldn't get thru and i tried online but also with no luck...
So we set out for a bit of walking around to some sights.

Walked thru the main boutique area where I felt under-dressed just walking along the street!! Saw a few chicks which definitely looked like model material too... tall... impossible thin... and potential bitches!! :-)
Checked out a couple of the stores cos Jee is determined to purchase a bag while we are over here... preferable Chanel but I think I may have beaten her down to a lowly Gucci or Prada... we'll see... Haven't given her my full approval yet... heck the original Chanel bag she wanted was about $4000 oz bucks!!! I could buy a heck of a lot of Xbox360s with that kinda money... and they'd be a lot more useful than a bag too!! :-)

We walked to the Duomo (cathedral) which is huge and just makes you say "WOW!" when you first see it... just the detail and size is very impressive... think we could have taken an elevator to the roof but we tried to get in the actual church area of it... no go... i did read the sign on the way in which stated that as the Duomo is a "sanctuary of God" we have to wear the correct clothing etc and had a fair idea that we may have not been admitted... at this stage, still no problem...

We were a bit buggered, so we felt like a coke and a sit down. Across from the Duomo is a big plaza with a big statue in the middle of a guy on a horse. Can't remember who he is at present... anywho... past the statue and on the opposite side of the plaza from the Duomo, there was a Maccas and a few shops down a cafe. Jee suggested just grabbing a coke from maccas, but i felt like a full strength bottle, not watered down icy crap so we went to the cafe. Out the front of the cafe was a coke fridge, so we grabbed a couple of bottles out and walked into the cafe to the register to pay. SIX BLOODY EURO FOR TWO 500mL BOTTLES OF COKE later (you can buy the same bottle from a vending machine for 1euro50cents) we thought we'd sit down on the chairs outside the cafe for a bit and sip our coke.
After about 30 seconds of seated happiness, a waiter comes up and tells us that we can't sit down. But we bought these drinks here we protest. He says 3euro and 3euro for the bottles is not enough to sit down, they are just for passers-by. Jee protests and says that the people sitting down at the other table were drinking cans of coke and they were sitting down! The waiter tells us they paid 5euro for the cans!! We say fine and get up and go. I toss a comment to the waiter as we leave "Do you understand the words rip off?" but either he didn't hear, didn't understand or my words weren't expensive enough for his ears cos he didn't comment...
RageEv wanted to flip a table or accidentally knock glass off a nearby table as he left, but Don'tWantToBeArrestedInAForeignCountryEv held back RageEv and stopped him...

I haven't got too many complaints to make about bad or slow service in places or even sometimes when staff are rude, but the whole "class" thing or hierachy kinda shit really puts a bee in my bonnet... Just like that customer I wrote about I think in the second post of my blog... the whole holier than thou attitude really bugs me...

Hence the title City of sWANK...

At the time, Jee and I were bitchin about various things and Jee suggested that we leave Milan tomorrow morning instead of the day after, but I said no... we should give it a chance...
looked around a bit more and came across what appeared to be a politcal display in one of the plazas... i'm not sure still, but i think it was a bunch (when I say a bunch, I mean about 100 - 150!) of AC Milan fan(atic)s voicing their opinion about something... supposedly there are no games on at present but they had banners and were chanting theme song kinda things... not sure... they set off smoke flare thingys too!! the police and special forces presence was VERY heavy too... i guess soccer (football) supporters get rabid on a regular basis so men with guns is a necessity...
The fanatics started to move out of the plaza after about half an hour but headed down the same street we were going to go down to get back to our hotel!! the cops followed them and they held up traffic cos of the size of the group!! we took another path and looped around, but eventually caught their tail again. luckily they headed off down a different road from a plaza than we were going down, so all was good. on the edge of that plaza was a park, so we thought we'd chill there for a bit. A minute later there was a HUGE bang that sounded like a bomb going off!! Looked back to the plaza and there was some smoke. One of the fanatics must've dropped a firework in bin or something. About 5min later and then another 5min later there were two more explosions further down the road. Psycho bastards... if anyone had been near where they went off, could've caused some bodily damage...

Follow AFL... it's safer...

Back to hotel... but of a rest... had dinner at neighbouring restaurant Osterio dell Taverna or something like that... delicious and cheap... run by a of Italian speaking Chinese!!

So today we thought we'd hit The Last Supper place (Cenacolo Vinciano) this morning to check if there were any tickets left for today to see the big pretty piccy that's now very very very popular thanks to Dan Brown. Got there at about 11am and were told by the nice lady that it was fully booked until late August... BUGGER... When Dan "BoyWonder" Gammon had told me we'd need to book in advance, I thought a day or two... not a month or so!!!
So we step outside and flippantly chatted about maybe heading back this way after hitting Greece, but late August was a little later than what we were thinking...

a minute later...

a man steps out from the Cenacolo Vinciano office and asks if we want to see the Last Supper. I said yeah, but I thought he was some dodgy tout selling bogus tickets or real tickets at 20 times the real price... we followed him inside and talked to the nice lady again...

she said someone had just cancelled and that we could see THE LAST SUPPER!!

Can I get a HALLELUJAH?!?

HALLE--motherf£$%ing--LUJAH BABY!!

There was another couple who also got to get in... we all couldn't believe it...

I gotta admit... when I first walked in and saw it... I got goosebumps... and that wasn't from the blast of freezin cold air conditioning preserving the atmospheric temp of the room... the goosebumps was from the overwhelming fact that we'd just hit a massive low of being denied a once-in-a-lifetime experience and then hitting a huge high!!
It was amazing and yes the "dude" to the left of the big JC is definitely a "dudette" (if you have no idea what I'm talking about, read The Da Vinci Code or see the movie). Jee hasn't read or seen it and didn't know exactly what the painting was about (she knew it was Jesus and his homies) but she thought the dude was a chick too straight away...

They only let in 25 people per 15 minutes from 9am to 6pm...
That's 100 people per hour... 900 people per day...
They are booked out for a month or more!!
If you are thinking of going (even if it's in a years time!) call: +39-2-89421146 NOW!!

Cheers!!
evBSc