April 3-4, 2009

went to Milan with Studio. We took the Eurostar from Florence Friday morning. When we got to Milan, we had a little time for lunch and then headed to our hotel to drop off our things. I was surprised by how nice the hotel was. I got one of the nicer rooms with only one roommate (and right next to the breakfast area).

The first piece of architecture we visited was the new complex built for the World Expo to be held in Milan in 2015. It's called Fiera di Milano and was designed by Massimiliano Fuksas. Fiera di Milano is super cool. It's made up of a lot of different buildings, but a crazy glass pavilion stretches the entire length which is 1.3 kilometers. Most of the buildings are pretty interesting, too, but it's really this flowing expanse of glass that really attracts your eye. The walkway underneath appears to be white but has a blue tint to it, so it feels like you're in the sky. The whole complex was closed when we got there, but Carlo can talk his way into anywhere, so the guards let us in.

Next we went to look at a building designed by Renzo Piano. We weren't supposed to be allowed to go inside this building either, but once again Carlo worked his magic and they let us in, but we weren't allowed past the lobby and we couldn't take pictures inside. I think this building has offices, conference rooms, and an auditorium. The main building, housing the offices and such, forms three sides of a square. In the middle is a huge mound covered in trees. Something is underneath the trees and I'm pretty sure it's the auditorium.

We took the metro to Castello Sforzesco. We took the metro just about everywhere because Milan is so big. We had to get off at the stop called Cadorna. We stopped to learn about the Cadorna Station. I think it's kind of ugly in a primary color/nursery school type of way, but I guess it's pretty symbolic of a type of architecture that was popular at the time it was built (which I think was the 1980s). There was a kind of neat sculpture out in front, though. The sculpture looked like a brightly colored needle and thread, but the thread passed under the road and came up on the other side.

From the castle we walked to the Duomo. At this point we were given free time to go in the Duomo, wander around, and find dinner. The Duomo church (I don't know what it's called) is really nice inside. The arches are pretty amazing. After walking around the Duomo, a bunch of us went into the Galleria, which was the first mall in the world. It has lots of unbelievably expensive stores. Up above, it also includes the second ever seven star hotel. The only other one is in Dubai. We were trying to imagine what could possibly be offered at a seven star hotel, and we decided they must provide secretaries and car service and gift baskets and museum passes and things like that.

After the Galleria, we headed back up towards our hostel to grab some dinner before we were supposed to meet back up with the group. We found a little pizza place with outdoor seating, so we ate there. At the end of the meal, we asked the waiter for a bottle opener to open the beer and wine we had gotten earlier at the grocery store. We weren't sure if this was rude since we hadn't bought any drinks at the restaurant, but the waiter was really nice and wound up sitting down with us to have a glass of wine. His friend who makes the pizzas came out, too. We wound up talking to them for a pretty long time. Both the waiter and the pizzaiolo (pizza-maker) are from Egypt, working in Italy to save up some money before they go back to Egypt. I've never met anyone from Egypt before so it was really interesting to hear about the schooling and jobs and things. We eventually had to leave because we were already late to meet back up with our class to experience the Milano nightlife, but our new friends invited us to come back for a few drinks when the place closed at midnight.

Carlo and Stefano (our teachers) took us to a piazza that was pretty much surrounded by bars. The nice thing about Italy is that everyone drinks outside, so while other people bought expensive drinks at the bar, those of us on a budget could drink the cheaper stuff we had bought at the grocery store. Carlo brought us into this one really expensive bar just to look at the architecture. The bar owners probably weren't too happy to see a big group of Americans walk in, look around without buying anything (Carlo specifically told us not to buy anything because it would really expensive), and walk back out. After hanging out in the piazza and laughing at all the crazy things people were walking around selling for awhile, we headed back to the hostel. On the way we passed our pizza place and of course it was just after midnight and we ran into the Egyptians. Luckily we were with our whole class, so we told the Egyptian guys that we had to go back to our hostel with the group and wouldn't be able to stick around.

Saturday morning we had breakfast at our hotel and then went to visit the Bocconi University. We had to take a tram there which was fun. The Bocconi University is really crazy. It was named the most beautiful building in 2008, which I think is a little weird, because it's all big boxy shapes, which I don't usually associate with the word beautiful. Next we walked around Milan learning about different historical events and geographical factors that have affected the architecture over the years. We eventually worked our way to some really colorful building whose name I can't remember. We went to a little art exhibit nearby. It was sponsored by a beer company so all the artwork featured the beer in some way, but they aslo had these really cool benches made out of cardboard. Instead of being corrugated, the cardboard had more of an accordian-type weave, so the benches could fold up or stretch out and be made into all sorts of shapes. We also walked around the fashion distrcit, since Milan is the fashion capital of the world.

The last place we went was the Padiglione D'Arte Contemporanea. After walking through the main building, we took a break to relax in the garden. Not much relaxing happened, since most of us decided to practice our handstands and cartwheels and have somersault races down the hill. When we were all worn out and dizzy from all that somersaulting, we went back into PAC to see the photography exhibit. Finally we headed back to the hotel to pick up our things and head back to Florence.