Site seeing and people watching!

The front of the church

Paintings that are only up during this time of year. They celebrate a Saint that was around during the time of Luther and tell the story of that era. It was very interesting!

The beautiful marble floors!

The Duomo Cathedral- the 3rd largest Cathedral in the world!

The baptismal area- they only baptize on one day of the year for people converting to Christianity!

A beautiful pic of the front of the Duomo Cathedral!

Yummy!

Hello all! Hope you guys are having a good week! It's been a high-stress week here in Milan! My department of the store had all it's changes early this week which caused me to temporarily loose my mind. I have it back, no worries :)

On Sunday we had a lot of interesting run-in's on our way to work and home from work.... on the metro on the way to work we were the only people on the train that were not still drunk from the night before... there was one guy passed out on the train the whole time we were on it, then when it got close to his stop his friends were yelling his name trying to wake him up... at one point even checking his pulse.. not what any of us needed at that time- a dead guy on the train... but no worries, he woke up (well enough to open his eyes..) and his friends carried him off the train. This was 7:15am mind you... a late night for anyone. On the walk from the metro to the store we witnessed more drunks trying to ride bikes on the cobblestone roads.. a skill even a sober person would need practice to master.

Today I took a tour of Milan with one of the girls on my team. It was so informative!! We walked around part of the city and took a bus tour of the rest. We had sweet audio packs to carry along with us so we could hear the tour leader the entire time. We were the two youngest tour attendants.. everyone else was an average age of 60, so we fit in very well:)

The highlight of my day was getting to see the Last Supper painting. The history behind the painting is unreal and it is more amazing in person then I could have ever imagined. The security at the church where the painting is explains it's significance. You went in with a group of no more than 15 people and were only allowed to stay in the room for 15 minutes. As a group you have to go through 3 glass rooms to get to the painting. When everyone gets in the room, the door you came in locks and the door to the next room then opens. After you finally get to the room with the painting there are employees of the church watching everyone to make sure no pictures are taken (sorry no pics this time- you'll have to come to Milan to witness this masterpiece!) . The painting is on a large wall in what use to be a dining hall for monks in a church. The church was bombed during World War I and II so there was a lot of damage done to the painting when it was exposed to the elements during those periods. It has gone through 3 renovations, the last one ending in 1998. Before coming to Italy, I had no idea the painting was a mural on a wall, not on a canvas hanging on a wall... it is huge! The detail and how Da Vinci made it seem 3 dimensional was amazing. I know nothing about art, but this was such a cool thing to see! Another thing I didn't know until seeing it was in the actual painting you can no longer see Jesus' feet. The painting was on the wall in the dining hall with the kitchen on the other side of the wall. (The heat from the cooking caused the painting most of it's damage in the early years) When the cooks decided they needed a larger doorway to the kitchen they just made the doorway larger, cutting off the middle of the bottom of the painting. So Jesus' feet are no longer shown in the actual painting- interesting huh!?

The rest of the tour was great- we saw the inside of the Duomo Cathedral, the Scala Theatre, and learned a lot about the history of Milano!

I'm extremely tired, I didn't get my laundry done today, and I have to be at work early! AH! But I hope you all have a great week- enjoy the pictures- and I promise to try and be better about posting more often!

Love you all!!! Ciao!!