Tuesday, September 14^th

The next day, we had our first "continental" breakfast. We’d signed up for a tour where we got breakfast in the hotel but had to find lunch and dinner for ourselves. Breakfast at every hotel included a variety of breads and rolls, some cheese, and some cold cuts. It also had breakfast cereal, usually granola, corn flakes, and maybe something like rice crispies. There might also be some type yogurt. There were usually several types of fruit. You serve yourself from a small buffet. In this particular hotel, they had some scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausages in a warmer tray. They also had balls of mozzarella in a bowl of water, a site that confused most of the Americans in our group.

When we got down to breakfast, Mom and Michele were already there and had nearly finished. Rebecca likes the cheese and bread for breakfast like a true European. I tend to go mostly for cereal after sampling a little bit of everything else. I made a rookie mistake on this first day, however. After I ladled up a mixture of granola and flakes, I poured the white liquid next to the cereal into the bowl. It looked a little thick and odd., but it had been awhile since I’d seen whole milk—we live on nonfat—so I didn’t think anything of it. When I got back to the table, I discovered that it was pure cream. It was like eating cereal with butter on it. I went back to try the fruit where I couldn’t get into so much trouble.

Since breakfast was our only shared meal, we were most likely to meet and get to know the other forty people in our tour group during it. Since there were four of us traveling together, we made our own little group within the larger group. On many days, we took up a whole table to ourselves at breakfast. This made us less likely to get to know our fellow travelers. . Everyone else was on the tour as a couple. Since tables for two were rare, they sat with other couples during breakfast. Little groups formed that ate together and sat together on the bus.

Still, this first morning, we met an older couple from Georgia. I say they were from Georgia because they had the sweetest Georgian accents. When we asked where they were from, they told us Los Angeles. We asked if they had retired there although it seemed a little strange to do so. No, they’d lived in Los Angeles for the last fifty years. It turns out that they were celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary so they had spent virtually their whole adult lives in Los Angeles. Still, they had the sweetest accents. It made me wonder if there was some enclave of southerners in LA where they only talk to each other in order to keep their accents up.

When we got back to our room after breakfast, all the televisions in every room was blaring and beeping. Since the tour is on a schedule, everyone has to get to the bus on time. This means that, in every hotel, we were going to have a wake up call. However, in the Brun, they didn’t use the phone. They set the televisions to act as alarm clocks. Unfortunately, most of the people on the tour went down to breakfast before the television went off. Apparently, the televisions were programmed to get louder and louder until they were turned off. This assured that they would wake the sound sleeper. Since no one was in their room, this meant that every television on the floor was set to full blare.

I pitied any travelers that weren’t on tour and happened to stay at the Brun. If they had planned to sleep late, they were probably cursing us out for turning up our television so loud. It was only seven in the morning. I know that if I’d been in a neighboring room, I would have been a little miffed, especially if I had been fighting jet lag. Fortunately, very few people in Europe have guns.

We met at the bus by 8AM. Surprisingly, everyone was just about on time. The only person we had to wait a little for was the twenty-something redhead, but even she wasn’t that late. We rode in the bus up into the Alps to see the village of Lake Cuomo and the Swiss town of Lugano. As we drove out of Milan, we got a chance to see how Italian traffic signals work. They don’t proceed from green to yellow to red with each light going off before the other comes on like ours do. Sometimes, the red light will go on. While it is still lit, the yellow light will come on. Then, with both lights red and yellow light still on, a green arrow might light up. I guess when all three lights are on, you get to take your pick.

Meanwhile, as we drive out of Milan, Enzo gives us a little of his version of Italian history. According to him, unlike every other nation, the Italians have never had a revolution. Perhaps the multiple-choice traffic lights are a hint as to why.

Our first stop was at Lake Cuomo, a resort town for the Italians. Enzo told us that it was well know for the silk it makes and that most Italian silk comes from this area. He told us very little else about the area. The tour offered an optional boat trip for $35 dollars and, apparently, if you wanted to know more about the area, we were supposed to take it.

We decided not to take the boat. Instead we looked around at the local shows for the next couple of hours. It was still morning, and the town was quiet. The most interesting shop we found was a silk shop right near where the bus dropped us. We spent some time looking at the silk and then walked through the town. There wasn’t much too it. Actually, the hardest part was finding street that had something interesting on them. We worked our way back toward the town center, looking for the "outlet silk shop." It was near their cathedral, but the silk in it didn’t seem nearly as nice as the first shop.

There was a large plaza outside the local church or Duomo, as they say here in Italy. Duomo means "house" as in "house of God." It would have been nice if someone, like tour guide, could tell us about the church, since the design seemed different form most Italian churches, but apparently, we weren’t on that kind of tour. Mom bought some cheeses at a local shop. This made us happy. Mom and I sat in the plaza while Michele and Rebecca went into the church. When they came out, the commented on the fantastic ceiling.

Soon, it was time to get back on the bus to go to Switzerland. On the bus, Enzo had a discussion with the redheaded girl about getting her an extra room. She was staying in the same room with her parents. They were a very nice couple who looked too old to have such a young daughter. I would have guessed that Red’s parents were the next oldest people on tour after Mom and the Georgia couple. She said that they snored so badly that she couldn’t sleep. Enzo told her that they’d gotten an extra room in Florence, but that they couldn’t get one in Venice. They were still working on the other cities. Red seemed very happy with the news.

When we got to Switzerland, Enzo, explained how uptight the Swiss are.

"The first word out of their mouths is always, ‘No,:" he claimed. "When you put money in their banks, they don’t even pay you interest. Can you imagine? But even though they don’t pay interest, they do quite well. If you converted your Italian lira to Swiss francs and put them in a bank thirty years ago, you would have gotten one franc for every ten lira. If you took the money out today, you would get 1000 lira per franc. Putting all your money in Switzerland can make you rich."

I wondered if Enzo understands that all this means is that the Italy government has been debasing its currency, that is, printing more money than it collected in taxes while Switzerland doesn’t. A thousand lira today won’t buy you any more than ten lira would have thirty years ago.

When we got into Lugano, our bus driver, Silvano, ran a red light. Both he and Enzo were very nervous about being stopped by the police.

"Very bad," said Enzo. "You get into big trouble here if you get caught running a red light."

"Not in Italy?" I asked.

"In Italy," he explained. "If you don’t run a red light, everyone thinks that you are stupid."

The bus dropped us off at the beginning of the shopping district. Enzo didn’t tell us anything about the history of the area, but he did lead us to a jewelry store where we got a free coffee spoon with the Rolex logo on it. Cool. On the way to the jewelry store, Enzo pointed out the best place to buy Cuban cigars. He also told us the brands of swiss chocolate that the thought we should buy: Freggo and Collieta, or something like that. He also told us about a department store whose caffeteria had a good lunch. I thought at the time that Enzo got a kickback from the cigar store, the jewelry store and the caferteria if we bought anything. I didn’t know about the chocolate.

After we got our spoons, we were then free to wander around Lugano as we had Lake Cuomo. They seemed less wandering here. Lugano is one long shopping plaza. We walked through the plaza, stopping at stores. No one saw much of interest though it was just fun being in Switzerland when we’d been thinking Italy.

We went for lunch at the cafeteria Enzo recommended. It was our first and nearly only bad meal on the trip. Rebecca got a watery risotto and dry saltimboca (veal with ham and cheese). Enzo was there, happily eating a meal. We decided that the only thing to suggest the cafeteria was that it seemed cheap, but both Michele and I thought that we’d gotten a terrible exchange rate on cashier so that it was probably pretty expensive after all. After lunch, we resolved not to follow any more of Enzo recommendations.

After lunch, Michele and Rebecca made their first purchases for the trip. In the department store, Michele found a tacky snow globe with Switzerland on it. She got it for Amanda, who is apparently collecting tacky snow globs.

Rebecca made her first buy at a local shop. She hadn’t felt like buying any of the silk in Lake Cuomo, but she was in more of a shopping mood now.

"You’re estrogen level is up," Michele suggested. It made perfect sense to me.

She bought some little glass animals. They consisted of flat sheets of glass of different colors melted together. She got a snail, a panda, a cat, an elephant. After she bought them, we noticed that they were from Murano, the glass factory in Venice. We were going to be in Venice the day after next, but still it made sense to buy them in Switzerland. As it turned out, we never saw them when we were in Venice. Of course, at the time, we didn’t know that, but it worked out fine.

We’d had lunch and done all our shopping and still had time to kill before the bus. We sat down at an outside table at a café. It was near where the bus would be picking us up. A fellow tourist recommended that we get the lemon tea. We waited and not one took our order, so I went inside and ordered "quatro" lemon teas. They looked at me as if I was thirsty.

"Four?" they asked in English, uncertain if they were hearing my Italian correctly.

"For our table outside," I said, pointing to where everyone else was sitting.

They smiled and nodded. After awhile, they actually brought the tea. Meanwhile, they were serving everyone else these little toasted sandwiches, paninni. They looked tasty, but we were full after having our bad lunch at the cafeteria.

When they finally brought our teas, I took a taste.

"Funny tasting lemon tea," I said. "Tastes more like peach to me."

Michele and Rebecca looked at each other after tasting their own tea.

"Taste like lemon to me," said Rebecca with certainly.

"Me, too," agreed Michele. "You know, there are mental disorders that cause you to taste things differently."

"Mine tastes like peach, too," said Mom.

Michele and Rebecca looked at each other and laughed as though Moms agreement made the diagnosis of a mental disorder certain.

"Must be hereditary," suggested Michele laughing.

At this point, I gave Rebecca my glass and insisted that she taste it.

"It is peach," Rebecca said, clearly surprised to discover my mother and I weren’t crazy.

Michele tasted Mom’s tea.

"Peach," Michele verified, not at all apologetic for insulting our mental condition.

"Peach tea. I really like it," Mom said. And she did. It was her favorite drink of the trip. This was possibly because Michele was wrong for thinking we were crazy.

When we got back in the bus, Rebecca and I sat in the front seats on the left side, with Mom and Michele sitting right behind us. We had been in the places all the way out and we happy to get them again. Rebecca tends toward motion sickness and one of our concerns in taking a bus tour was whether a two-week bus ride would bother her. She was taking ginger for it, but she didn’t want to take any chances by sitting further back in the bus, especially when we were driving through the mountains. As the tour guide, Enzo sat in the front of the bus on the right, across from Rebecca and I.

When everyone was on, Enzo asked us how we enjoyed Lugano. He then asked if anyone had bought the type of candy that he’d recommended. Several people said they had including the couple sitting right behind him across from Mom and Michele. He then asked if he could have a piece. They offered him a whole bar, but he turned it down and instead asked for a piece. The lady carefully started unwrapping the candy bar.

"Okay, everyone," Rebecca whispered quickly to the rest of the family.

As the lady broke of a piece of candy for Enzo, Mom, Michele, Rebecca and I stuck out our hands in unison. It got a nice laugh from the rest of the bus. We had to assure the lady that we didn’t really want her candy.

On the trip back, we discovered that the tour of Milan the next day didn’t include seeing DaVinci’s Last Supper, one of the highlights of Milan. Rebecca and I had seen it about three years before when it was being restored. We’d hoped to see it again now that the restoration was finished. Our only opportunity would be tonight, after we got back from Lugano. Fortunately, someone on the bus told us that it was open from seven to ten that night. We decided to go to see it and get our meal somewhere nearby. There wasn’t that much near the Grand Hotel Brun which was located on the northern outskirts of Milan.

We got cleaned up and went to get a cab. There was a line of them in front of the Brun, down a hill. We tried to signal to them to come up, but the drivers seemed to busy talking to one another. We waited for the doorman who must have a whistle, but when he didn’t show up, we finally walked down the hill.

We got in that cab and asked the driver to take us to "Leonardo DaVinci’s Last Supper."

The driver didn’t have a clue. He spoke no English at all.

"DaVinci," we said. "Leonardo DaVinci."

"DaVinci?" he repeated. It wasn’t certain that he’d ever heard such a word before. He called over another cab driver.

"DaVinci," we said to the new cab driver. "Leonardo DaVinci. The Last Supper."

"Il Cena di DaVinci," I added in my crude Italian. I knew the word "Cena" meant dinner, since most of my Italian vocabulary revolves around food. "The Supper by DaVinci" was what I think I was saying. I didn’t know how to say "last."

"DaVinci?" the second cab driver asked. Apparently, the artist and his work isn’t as well known as I thought.

"Il Fresco di DaVinci," I said. I didn’t know how to say "painting" in Italian, but the Last Supper is a fresco, and that sound like a word that should be the same in Italian and English.

The second cab driver shrugged and walked off, having no idea what we wanted. The first cab driver drove us up to the hotel door and signaled for a doorman.

When the doorman came, we told him that we wanted to see DaVinci’s Last Supper. He gave the cab driver the name of the church it was kept.

The cab driver was still confused.

"Chuiso," he said, telling us that the church was closed. This made us a little nervous.

When we got there, he was right. The church was just closing. Fortunately, the exhibit of DaVinci’s Last Supper, was open just as we were told.

The changes in the exhibit surprised Rebecca and me. We’d been there only three years before. Last time, you could just buy a ticket and walk into where they were doing the restoration. People could walk in an out and everything was wide open.

Now it was complete changed. Getting into see the exhibit is like getting into a high security area at a nuclear facility. They only allowed twenty-five people at a time in. Since we didn’t have reservations, we had to wait in a line outside. When they finally let us into the ticket counter, we could buy tickets, but we couldn’t go any further. We waited by the ticket counter. After about fifteen minutes, they let us into a hallway to the side of the ticket counter. They then stopped us in the hallway where there was all kinds of good information about DaVinci and the Last Supper written in Italian. La Ultima Cena was how you’d say "the last supper" in Italian, if you had a cab driver that would suspect you were talking about art and not a good place to eat. .

A man stood at the head of the line in the hallway and tried the electronic tickets of the first people in line in a machine there. The machine kept showing a red light, so we could go on. Finally, after we’d waited about fifteen minutes, the machine showed a green light. We could now advance.

We rounded the corner to another hallway. This one had information on DaVinci’s life and The Last Supper in English. This seemed like progress. In front of us were two large glass doors. The doors were closed. Above door were six red lights, each about the size of a headlight on a car. The red color seemed to indicate that we could go no further.

Finally, the lights change colors. The doors opened. Only a few of us could advance because the glass doors only opened a little vestibule, about the size of a large elevator. The glass doors on the other side of the vestibules were closed. The lights above them were red. The group of us crowded in the vestibule waited. It occurred to me that this was something like the beginning of Get Smart, the old comedy, spy show that began with a series of door after doors. Of course, those doors all opened right away. The purpose of these was to hold people back. It reminded me of the line management at Disney World.

When we finally got into the room with the Last Supper, Rebecca and I were again surprised. Three years ago, during the restoration, it had looked like a construction site, with ladders and bags of cement everywhere. You walked on plywood. The walls of the room were unfinished. The Last Supper itself was made up of different sized squares, each representing an area in a different stage of restoration. The crucifixion facing the Last Supper must have been there, but I didn’t notice it. They may have covered it to protect it during construction. The room had seemed noisy with tourists and workers like a construction site. In that environment, the painting hadn’t seemed very awe-inspiring.

Now the room was finished. It looked like a museum. It was quiet. The walls and ceiling were finished and painted. The Last Supper has a big banister in front of it to keep you from getting too close. Air conditioning and dehumidifiers hum. In the reverent hush, the painting is much more impressive.

The painting itself is just a shadow of itself, literally. The restoration was very controversial because they removed all the over-painting from previous restorations, leaving only DaVinci’s original paint. What is left is brighter and cleaner than before, but very little is left. According to historical records, DaVinci's original painting had blurred with a few decades and started to fall apart. What we saw now was what was left of that fresco. The well-know figures are there. The features are softer, more blurred, but it is still a wonderful picture. Strangely enough, the folds in the tablecloth look perfect when so much else is lost. What particularly impressed me was the sense of depth in the picture. The painted room still looks three-dimensional.

After seeing the Last Supper, it was time for dinner. Rebecca asked a girl in the gift shop where a good restaurant was in the area. She gave us directions in Italian. Unfortunately, I had forgotten my map of Milan. This was stupid since this was the only time we would really have to be walking around the city. Rebecca was more optimistic. The girl said the restaurant was near the Duomo, the central cathedral. It seemed as thought that should be easy to find, even without a map. The last time Rebecca and I had been in Milan, we’d walked between the Duomo and the Last Supper so we knew it wasn’t miles and miles.

Of course, our interpretation of what the gift-store clerk had said differed at the first corner. I thought that we were suppose to go straight. Michele thought that we were supposed to turn. Since it looked busier down the way she pointed, the group decided to follow her lead. I didn’t argue. I was the one who had forgotten the map.

It was busy the way Michele led. Many people bustled on the streets and sidewalk, heading home after the day’s work. It was dinnertime. They had closed all the shops. Cars zipped down the street. After a few blocks, when we didn’t see the cathedral, it was clear we were lost.

I began to ask people the way to the Duomo in my weak Italian. The rest of the group didn’t trust my directions, but I thought I knew where I was going. Unfortunately, the streets were dark, the sidewalks narrow and the traffic rushing by. We walked for a half a mile. The neighborhood looked dangerous. The walls were covered with graffiti. This didn’t seem normal for Europe. The people we asked for directions seemed nice, but it was clear that the church wasn’t close. Unfortunately, there weren’t any restaurants around either. Like sensible eighty-year old, Mom didn’t like being lead through the streets of an strange city at night by her children who clearly didn’t know where they were going. The experience made her cranky.

Fortunately, we came upon a large restaurant after another few blocks with its outdoor tables lit by white Christmas tree lights. It was on a busy corner, but a wall of bamboo curtains separated its tables from the traffic. We went in an got a table for four away from the traffic. I had a wonderful rice dish with crab as a starter and it came served in a crab carapace. I had fish stew for my second course, and it was a wonderful mix of clams, mussels, shrimp, and crawfish with no plain fish to speak of. After our bottle of wine, everyone had forgotten the long walk as was in a good mood again.