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The train ride out of France was awful. We were in the smoking car, and a group of four sitting two seats in front of us smoked nonstop the whole trip. One guy went through six cigarettes in an hour (the only hour we bothered counting). They were also extremely loud, and seemed to enjoy smoking and socializing with a bizarrely made-up woman dressed in a leopard-skin dress. She wore her hair and makeup like a Flamenco dancer. To compound our misery, the train randomly stopped somewhere, due to a mechanical problem that we never quite understood. A voice came over the intercom and told us it would be 10 minutes, then 20 minutes, then another 10. We got off the train and escaped the smoke for a bit, but everyone else got off the train to have a cigarette outside, which drove us to the cafeteria car.
The train station in Milan was built by Mussolini and looks like it -- huge, heavy and foreboding, with massive cement walls and a gaping mouth for a front that has warriors on Clydesdales guarding the entrance. The inside was dimly lit and musty, like stepping into a building in a movie set in the 1930s. The train station was supposedly the worst spot in the country for pickpockets, and although we saw plenty of seedy characters, we never felt threatened by the gangs of kids that, we were warned, work the main staircases.
Our hotel was pleasant enough, and close to the subway station. The subway was efficient, but extremely loud, as it traveled with the windows open. We had dinner on the Piazza Duomo, which was our first piazza and our first duomo. After dinner, Hari wanted a picture of the pigeons, and we were standing out in the piazza, with her holding her camera, and one of the guys who made his living selling seed bags to tourists came over and started pressing seed into Eric's hand. Eric tried to refuse, but the man followed, calling the birds, while Hari took pictures and laughed. He put a handful of seed in Eric's hand, who said no and dropped it. He put another handful in and held the hand closed while he called the birds, which descended in a flock and crawled allover Eric's arm. Eric reports: "Eeewwwww."
Pouring rain in the morning kept the pigeons and mosquitoes at bay. We did a little jersey shopping and walked out to the enormous soccer stadium, which seats 85,000. We had our first mozzarella and tomato picnic sandwiches from a gourmet grocery market, where you order your food, then they give you a receipt, and then you go pay at the cashier, then return to pick up your food.
We had an appointment to see the Last Supper at 8:15 a.m. our last morning, which we managed to make it to on time. The church allowed groups of 25 with an appointment in for 15 minutes at a time. Our group had the two of us and 23 tourists on a tour. We walked into a waiting room while a door closed behind us, then into another, smaller waiting room with a closed door in front. The entrance door closed behind us, and then the front door opened, and we did the same in one more room, before we got into the church. The guide, for some reason, led his tour group to stand all the way in the back of the church, so we got to walk, alone, in the very front. Even stranger, the guide led his group out completely and into the gift shop with about five minutes left on our time. So we got five minutes completely alone with the second-most famous painting of all time. It was really cool - still and quiet in the church, with only the sound of the air machines that keep the painting from decaying faster than it already is.
