For our last morning, we decided to focus on a scientific theme. We needed to decide between the Leonardo da Vinci Science Museum or the Leonardo 3 exhibition. Both had fantastic reviews. We opted for the latter as it was much closer and we fancied a stroll back to the main thoroughfare near the Duomo Square.
The exhibition itself was very interactive, with many displays of da Vinci models and inventions hanging from the ceiling and a great deal of factual background available on screens throughout the exhibition. Dave built a self- supporting bridge and there was a whole room dedicated to The Last Supper. The latter provided interesting background and interpretation and highlighted the works that he had produced during his time living in Milan.
We had our final stroll down the main shopping gallery and indulged in a coffee and a beautiful and very expensive tiramisu cake, which we shared!!! Sue then decided to honour the old tradition of spinning around three times on the mosaic of a bull outside the Prada store for good luck. There were quite a few tourists queueing up to do the same. The instruction was to place your right foot on the bull’s nether regions before spinning around three times. It is such a popular activity that the mosaic has to be regularly repaired!!
We took the Metro back to our hotel, packed our bags and put them in the luggage store before strolling back to the restaurant that we had been to on the first night, Non Solo Lesso. We were greeted like old friends! 🤣 I opted for the Ossobuco again with the express intent of eating it properly including the marrow. It was delicious. Dave opted for another Milanese speciality, cotoletta a La Milanese, which is a breaded and fried veal cutlet. It was absolutely enormous – bigger than his plate in fact! At that point we did not realise how fortunate we were to be well-fuelled for the journey ahead!!!
Rather like a book end to our trip, we rounded it off with further travel delays! We had to walk to the station as the metro did not go there. We then bought tickets for the train journey to the airport only to find that all the airport shuttles were cancelled for the rest of the day. We then went outside and found a bus for the airport. We had left plenty of time for the journey, which we thought was good at this stage! When we got to the airport, however, we saw that there was a two hour delay on our flight. This gave us an opportunity to write this blog as we had been too busy during the week to do so!!
The story did not stop there! Sue set off the alarms on her way through security and had to be thoroughly searched – she did not enjoy it! 😃 After the long wait, we were finally let through and were excited at our impending departure. We were only disappointed further, however, when we ended up waiting for what seemed like an eternity in a stairwell. We got chatting to a Canadian girl who told us that if we had a three hour delay, we would be entitled to quite a bit of compensation. We realised that it was going to be touch and go how long the delay was and as a result, the airline had us all lined up ready to board to try and avoid the three hour delay. When we could finally go through, we were really rushed onto the plane. As a result our landing time in England was two hours and 50 minutes late – all very frustrating as everyone had become very optimistic about at least getting compensation by this stage!! When we got the car, Dave drove around to the recharging facility at the airport just to top it up to get us home .The final piece in the jigsaw of our awful journey home was that there were significant delays on the M3 due to roadworks and we had to follow a long and dark diversion near Winchester. We had hoped to get home just after 10 o’clock and finally rolled up by the drive at 10 to one. We needed the next day to recover!! 🤣
All in all, despite the delays and the drama, it had been a really great trip. Milan had exceeded our expectations and is a really beautiful and interesting city. The absolute highlight for both of us was going up the Duomo – especially with the blue skies at the right moment! The buzz of fashion week added an extra level of interest and the food was really great.
Dave also read a novel “Beneath a scarlet sky”. He was reading it while we were there and has only just finished it. a week later. He wishes that he finished it there as the last quarter had a lot of the city in it. It is based on an Italian boys experiences during the war and is a True”ish” story. A pretty good read although he is sure Italian boys would swear when they did banter.