No, I did not have any cookies

Airlines are strange. Sometimes it's cheaper to stop somewhere else on the way to your destination, so for fun we decided to stop for a night in Milan. We arrived in the afternoon and got lost trying to find our hotel. Eventually we oriented ourselves and were able to find it, and dropped off our gear and took our cameras out to see what we could see. We found a park, a couple of small statues, and some other so-so stuff. At this point we had a good map from the hotel so we found what appeared to be the center of town and headed in that direction. Before we made it there, we found that Milan was being invaded...by GIANT PURPLE SNAILS!



They weren't very cuddly, but they weren't slimy either, so Lisa thought it'd be good to make friends with them. There was also a statue of Leonardo, looking sort of frightening. Perhaps he was directing the invasion.



Luckily for us, we'd found some people out and about, which made us a little more confident in our map skills. We wandered through some nice shopping streets, with stores from all the high end fashion boutiques and technology companies, and a few other places that sell things way out of our price range. It's fun to browse even if the store people know you can't afford it.

Nearing the city center, though we didn't know it, we discovered this nicely lit covered street/shopping area. Apparently it's a really famous bit of architecture.



Since it was pretty late by this time, many of the smaller places were closed. We looked at a few restaurants but decided they were a bit pricey. The rest of the street was cool, from the tiled floors to the lights on the ceiling. I'll say this for Europe: they don't skimp on making things look cool.





The end of this covered street opened into a large square which brings us to...

...THE MAIN EVENT.



This is why we came to Milan. This church is awesome. It's huge, it's gorgeous, it's amazing, and any other really cool adjectives you want to add. According to wikipedia, it's the fourth largest church in the world. I believe it.

It's a nice change from most French churches that use towers rather than the large triangular facade seen here. And like many European churches, just about everything is decorated. The carvings on the face are ridiculous. Sadly, the pictures I took didn't come out clearly, but there are whole scenes from the Bible carved out over the course of several meters in both directions. This door, which includes a Lisa for scale (1.6256m tall), was covered with scenes. Absolutely amazing.



We checked out some of the open stores around the square, then found a nice place to grab a bite to eat. I had pizza (who wouldn't?) and Lisa had gnocchi. We wandered around the back streets a bit, found the back of the cathedral, an old streetcar still in use, and some other cool stuff. But because I am a sucker for churches, you get more pictures of it.

Looking at it from the place. I think this pretty well sums up the awesomeness.



And this is one of the windows on the back of the church. They do such amazing work with stone and glass.



There's a lot more information about it here, so I urge you to take a look.

As always, there are a few more photos on my Facebook album.