Josh's Euro Trip 2k15: More Milan

Okay so I'm writing this at 3:00 in the morning of August 3rd because I can't sleep, but I'll just post when I can. This is regarding the past two days, Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday was a very very rainy day. I'm glad Andrés talked me into bringing my rain jacket with me instead of leaving it with him to bring back to California...

We didn't do much different today. I had breakfast with Everardo in a cafe nearby, and then we went to a small park just half a mile away. Mr Wood, if you're reading this, he told me that this was one of your favorite parks to visit when you came here. And with good reason: it was a very nice and beautiful park, complete with swans and everything!

We came back and had lunch before his nephews came and picked me up for the rest of the day. We visited the Maria Della Grazie Church, and honestly, it was my favorite church I've visited in Europe. The simplicity of it, yet the complex artwork come together to form an amazing place. I'm not sure if the singing I heard was from a practicing choir or if it was being projected through speakers, but it was beautiful. I would go back in a heartbeat.

We walked over to another church which was less of a church and more of a place with paintings of religious events and history. But it was very interesting nonetheless.

Also, remember when I said that we visited the outside of the main cathedral but we didn't go inside? After we decided to get out of the rain, we figured we would wait in the very short line to visit the inside.

And let me tell you, it wasn't as exciting as I had hoped. The huge amounts of tourists taking pictures (which did include me...) seemed to ruin the effect that I had imagined. Take away all the sound from the tourists, and I'm sure it would be an amazing place- people singing in Latin, church services being performed in Italian, the language of Catholicism basically, the immensely large columns, each topped with 7 or 8 or 9 statues, all the stained glass windows that towered overhead. It was really quite wonderful, even though it could have been better without all the people.

And that was mainly my day on Saturday. After dinner, Giammi and Danielli (the nephews) took me to meet a couple of his friends, one of which we walked around with for a couple miles to see a huge plaza they talked about. So imagine the biggest plaza in all of Milan. Think you have a clear picture of it?

It was practically a parking lot...

Sunday was a pretty good day, overall. Everardo and I had breakfast at the cafe again and went on another brief walk. At 2:00, the nephews picked me up and drove me and a couple others to a lake about an hour away. Their brother and father like to ride their bicycles here, people relax, play card games, etc. What you would expect from a lakefront.

So we played Rummy, and played some volleyball (but not really...). We mainly just sat in the grass for a couple hours, which was nice.

It took them a while before they told me that the lake was going to have fireworks that night, which is why we were there. I saw some swans, some ducks, and a Coypu?? I had never heard of it, but it's basically a giant swimming rat and it's really freaky just because-- I mean... It's a rat... Swimming... And it's like 2 feet long... Ugh...