After a 2.5 hour train trip in a virtually empty car, we headed for our Milan apartment, an easy five minute walk from the station. We'll only be here a couple of days, mainly to see La Scala and then depart for Morocco on one of the cheapo Easyjet flights. Remarkably, it'll cost more for the airport hotel and airport transfers than it will for the flight (for two) to Morocco.
Milan isn't part of the big three of Italian tourism and we're staying in a small flat in a business district, where tourists are far-outnumbered by locals. If there's any drawback, a lot of the local restaurants keep short hours geared to the folks working in surrounding skyscrapers. Our La Scala tour was postponed at the last minute since one of the major sponsors (Rolex) chose to do a last minute photo shoot and reserved the entire building. We arrived the next morning and were met by Francine, who is responsible for recently organizing the first backstage tours for the general public.
Lucky us that we were the only people on the tour. We visited various boxes, including the Royal box and another box that was left in it's original condition after the extensive remodeling of the building in the early 2000's. This remodeling brought the house up to more modern standards and we were quite surprised at the technological improvements that put the house on a level with more modern buildings like the Met. Essentially, they tore out everything behind the curtain and built a large seven story building to accommodate workshops, artists, practice rooms, offices and most importantly, gave them the ability to make rapid scenery changes. The photo above shows the set for Simon Bocanegra. La Scala is slowly moving towards modernizing its productions, but much like any other house, they have to keep the older patrons/donors happy and such radical sets as seen above will cause some concern. The trade off is that Domingo is singing a role that Suzee and I saw at the Met, thus assuaging the same people who might gripe about modern productions.
That's Suzee and Francine in the photo at the left.
After La Scala, we strolled about in the Duomo area and just picked off a few of the major sights. The church is the 4th largest in the world behind London, Rome and Seville, and was built to accommodate the entire population of Milan in the 15th century. Some of the original stained glass remains.
Milan has an inordinate amount of pickpockets, beggars and thieves. In both instances, when I attempted to purchase subway tickets, people rushed up to the machines and started pushing buttons for me in anticipation of a tip. I protested, but they wouldn't back off. Then they got insulted when I wouldn't tip! I've heard of instances where they'll steal both tickets and change from the bin underneath the coin slots. The police seem to look the other way most of the time and in the one instance where we saw security chase a guy away, the "helper" returned within less than a minute. Makes one appreciate the relatively hassle-free NYC.
In sum, we've enjoyed Italy despite the harrassment in both Venice and Milan. The food has been great and Suzee has been able to see some of the highlights of Florence, Tuscany, Venice and Milan.
Neither of us has any desire to return and it would behoove the officials to protect their tourism industry by removing some of the deadbeat hangers-on. Then again, they don't seem to do much about the same sorts of situations in San Francisco.
Lucky us that we were the only people on the tour. We visited various boxes, including the Royal box and another box that was left in it's original condition after the extensive remodeling of the building in the early 2000's. This remodeling brought the house up to more modern standards and we were quite surprised at the technological improvements that put the house on a level with more modern buildings like the Met. Essentially, they tore out everything behind the curtain and built a large seven story building to accommodate workshops, artists, practice rooms, offices and most importantly, gave them the ability to make rapid scenery changes. The photo above shows the set for Simon Bocanegra. La Scala is slowly moving towards modernizing its productions, but much like any other house, they have to keep the older patrons/donors happy and such radical sets as seen above will cause some concern. The trade off is that Domingo is singing a role that Suzee and I saw at the Met, thus assuaging the same people who might gripe about modern productions.
After La Scala, we strolled about in the Duomo area and just picked off a few of the major sights. The church is the 4th largest in the world behind London, Rome and Seville, and was built to accommodate the entire population of Milan in the 15th century. Some of the original stained glass remains.
Milan has an inordinate amount of pickpockets, beggars and thieves. In both instances, when I attempted to purchase subway tickets, people rushed up to the machines and started pushing buttons for me in anticipation of a tip. I protested, but they wouldn't back off. Then they got insulted when I wouldn't tip! I've heard of instances where they'll steal both tickets and change from the bin underneath the coin slots. The police seem to look the other way most of the time and in the one instance where we saw security chase a guy away, the "helper" returned within less than a minute. Makes one appreciate the relatively hassle-free NYC.
In sum, we've enjoyed Italy despite the harrassment in both Venice and Milan. The food has been great and Suzee has been able to see some of the highlights of Florence, Tuscany, Venice and Milan.
Neither of us has any desire to return and it would behoove the officials to protect their tourism industry by removing some of the deadbeat hangers-on. Then again, they don't seem to do much about the same sorts of situations in San Francisco.
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