Here we are, finally, the first installment of the Italy 2007 vacation extravaganza… The slideshow below shows some of our best photos from Milan, the complete set can be viewed at Flickr.

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Milan was really my second stop of the trip as I spent 2 days in London for work before I got there. I’ll write a few words on London later. As Milan is a BIG city, and really has more in common with France and Switzerland than Tuscany, we did a whirlwind tour and then headed out to Genova / Genoa.

The first night I was in Milan we had a work function with a tram (streetcar) tour of the city by night and then dinner at a very nice restaurant the name of which I can’t remember. The first few pictures are from the night tour. The next day I worked myself to near exhaustion (not really) and then had a drink or two in the bar with colleagues Pete and Jamie while we waited for my mom to arrive from the airport.

My mom was quite the trooper for her first night in Italy. Not only did she manage to find her way from Malpensa airport to the hotel by herself - the journey required two buses and 90 minutes of travel after she landed - but she stayed awake until almost midnight! The four of us went out looking for food and entertainment.

We ended up at the Blue Note Milano watching a live performance by the Bill Evans Band. Only I would travel half-way around the world to and wind up seeing an American bluegrass / jazz band in Milan. The music was fantastic, the food great - if a bit pretentious - it was a nice way to kick off the vacation part of our trip.

The next morning we got an early start, struggled to find the bus back into the city center, and finally took a cab to Stazione Centrale to drop our bags and head out to see the sights. As we really wanted to see da Vinci’s The Last Supper but couldn’t get tickets, we decided to do a bus tour of the city before we headed out for Genova. The tour was a bit of a whirlwind, but we saw the main highlights including:

The Duomo, which is the world’s largest Gothic cathedral and the third largest Roman Catholic church in the world. The outside was covered in scaffolding, but the inside was open in all its glory. As it was designed to hold 40,000 people, the first impression I got was one of massive space. With the cloudy skies outside, the light in the Duomo was dim and it almost felt like we were under water.

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, built in the height of the mid-1800s, is a concoction of vaulted glass ceilings and opulent shops. It’s pretty dang impressive, both for the caliber of the stores, and also for the paintings up high and the glass ceiling. I can only imagine how impressive it would be on a sunny day. It also houses one of only two seven star hotels in the world.

When you emerge from the other end of the galleria, you find a statue of da Vinci and are facing Teatro alla Scala. From the outside the theatre really isn’t very impressive. Apparently when it was built the piazza was not there so there was no need for an impressive facade since it couldn’t be seen. So now it just looks like the forgot to put on the frou-frou when they were done. The inside though, the inside is pretty awe-inspiring. The mirrors and the velvet, the rows and rows of boxes, it must be an amazing place to get dressed up and spend an evening.

From there we wandered back to the bus and headed out. Our next stop was Castello Sforzesco for a quite peek. We only had enough time to get off, take our pictures of the tower and the fountain, get a gelato and then get back on the bus. I’d have to say that the castle was a lot more impressive than it was during the day. The red brick gives it an intimidating air and it reminded me more of the gulag than it did a castle. But the gelato was excellent.

Finally, we arrived at our ultimate destination, the reason we did the tour at all. Santa Maria delle Grazie is the modest, yet beautiful, red brick church that houses Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. Getting in to see the painting is kind of like what I imaging getting in to see the white house would be. They let in only 25 people each 15 minutes. As you wait your turn you are moved through a series of chambers with automatic doors sliding open and closed in front and behind you. The last chamber has pretty high humidity and then, suddenly, you’re in.

And before you is this massive wall of a painting. Somehow I never really understood until that moment that it is really a wall. That it’s that big. It’s impressive, and captivating and hard to know where to look. As I stood and gazed at it, everything I’d ever been told about it was running through my head. Mixing together with what our guide was saying about the theories about it secrets. I’m glad that we saw it, it truly was a once in a lifetime experience. Since da Vinci didn’t use traditional fresco techniques, and the church was bombed in WWII, it truly is amazing that it has managed to survive as long as it has.

If you’re ever in Milan I’d recommend seeing The Last Supper, La Scala and the Duomo, the rest was interesting, but not nearly as impressive as the museums we saw later in our travels.

At the conclusion of the tour we headed back to the Duomo for a longer look around. Then we took the Metro back to Stazione Centrale and caught a train to Genova. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s installment.