Italy, Day One

I won't be blogging every day, but I'm trying to stay up and there's free internet at the hotel, and I probably won't be doing a regular Sunday blog until I get back so some initial thoughts:

I have been in Italy for about 12 hours. I have been to a cathedral, a shopping mall, a bakery, a pizza place, a castle with a museum, a newsstand, two pharmacies, a bookstore, and a park. (not in that order) I have *not* gotten gelatto, but maybe that's for tomorrow.

The cathedral was remarkably impressive - it's apparently the largest Gothic Cathedral in Europe, started in 1380's or there abouts and in ongoing construction since. It's where Napoleon was crowned King of Italy, and it reportedly contains a nail from the True Cross brought to Milan in the 400's by some saint or other. It's also got Gorgeous Workmanship, in carvings, ceilings, and stained glass.

The shopping mall is just a shopping mall, but pretty, and possibly where the name "Galleria" comes from for shopping malls, we weren't sure. It did have a bookstore that's older than the United States, but we didn't go in. The bakery was some little hole in the wall, and had yummy but not amazing fried-dough-like stuff. The pizza place was recommended by Killbot, and quite nice - the crust was thinner and crisper than any pizza I've ever had in the U.S., and the toppings were fresher with tastier cheese. Also no tomato sauce on either of the ones we ordered, although there was sauce on some of the others, I think. The castle was impressively large ("solid" is the guidebook's description), but more like a fort than what I think of as a "castle" - it was mostly a giant wall with some rooms built into the walls, surrounding a big empty space in the middle. The museum did have an (unfinished) Michelangelo sculpture, though, so I can say I've seen that now. The newsstand had a wide selection of comic books, and Italian comic books seem to still be deep in their pulpy roots. I couldn't actually read them, but they were totally westerns and shlock-adventure things, rather than superheroes. The two pharmacies were searching for suntan lotion, which only the second had - they were both much smaller than a CVS, and much more explicitly "only things that are plausibly medicine", not a vast array of other convenience store stuff. The bookstore had a remarkably large selection of translated English authors (I was going to say American, but there was a large Agatha Christie section) - I'd guess something like half the books, which surprised me. The park was pretty and green, "Better than the Common, maybe not better than the Garden, not better itself than Central Park but not surrounded by looming skyscrapers."

In general, there are enough people who speak English that I'm not particularly uncomfortable, which I was worried about. Typing on this keyboard is confusing, though, as there are extra keys (ò à ù è) and all the punctuation is moved around to make room for them. But now ilhander is here, so I will wrap up.

Oh, but one more thing: I totally did not yell "Oswald" and leap with a picture of JFK. (Bonus points to the first person who gets that who isn't justom.)