April 30, 2019

Suzanne and I had a hectic time of it, getting the train in Verona to Milan. No, disasters, just near misses. The Milan train station Central (I have found 2 others on the map) is a multi-level zoo, but we finally found a cab and made it to our very modern and contemporary hotel. What a change from the historic properties that we’ve stayed in to date. We are in a part of Milan I’m not familiar with and we seem to be ensconced in a small neighborhood. We’ll have to figure out the Metro subway system tomorrow to see the sights.

We have a view of Stefan’s Boeri’s, Bosco Verticale. It’s architecture like this that have made Milano a global leader in design. These residential towers contain more than 900 trees on 96,000 square feet of terraces. This was on my list of sites to see and here they are right in our window. The buildings were completed in 2014 and won the International Highrise Award, a prestigious international competition and they also won the “2015 best tall building worldwide” from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat*. Here’s to creative and brave developers and architects that aren’t afraid of originality and improved urban living.

We decided to explore our little corner of the city to find some lunch although it was a bit late. Many restaurants in Italy close at 2:30 to 3:30 pm and reopen at 7:00 to 8:00 pm. We found a little DimSum restaurant that was still open for 30 minutes, so we took a break from Italian food and had a quick, light lunch. There was an interesting building at the end of the street, so we walked down to take a look. It turned out to be a Monumental Cemetery (Cimitero Monumentale) that was opened in 1866. It was created to consolidate several small cemeteries around the city. 2,700,000 square feet of land are dedicated to this amazing display of tombs with contemporary and classical Italian sculptures. Although not the cheeriest of locales the artwork is incredible.

The little flower shops in the featured photo are outside the cemetery.

I have never seen anything like the ornate tombs in this cemetery. The cost of constructing these tombs with their ornamentation and sculptures boggles the mind.

So on that note, we are down for the day. Tomorrow we will fire up the engines and storm the sites of Milano.

* Bosco Verticale, Wikipedia

*Cemetry Monumental, Wikipedia