• Category Archives italy
  • Inside Milan Duomo

    The most important thing we noted here is that despite dome being part of the name this cathedral has no dome.

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    It has impressive arches.

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    Oh and here’s another piece of the cross. I think we may have seen enough to make a full cross by now. The tricky part is that so many seem to be different types of wood.

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    It is a very tall building.

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    This is a very elaborate carving of a guy with no skin. Because, art?

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    There are so many panels of stained glass, well technically painted glass.

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    I think this is Mary floating off to heaven.

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    This is closer to traditional stained glass and only has a bit of highlights on it.

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    This is not a statue or art pieces, but rather equipment used for restorations. Like many buildings in Italy they are working on them.

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    That dot is a hole in the building. You may wonder why they would put a hole in the roof.

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    It is for the monthly calendar of course. At noon the spot will be somewhere on the floor or wall and that corresponds to the zodiac. I didn’t realize they used the zodiac but I suppose it is pretty close to our months anyways. We couldn’t find the line until it was too late so the dot was nowhere near where it was supposed to be.

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  • Milan Shopping Spree

    Shopping is listed in all the guidebooks as the major activity for Milan, and we needed some things, so we went to their famous mall.

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    It looks very fancy inside.image

    Though it doesn’t look so nice from the roof of the Cathedral across the street.

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    One item in this window is worth over $4000 Canadian. We’re not sure which.

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    I’m guessing it is the skirt that looks similar to this $8042 jacket.

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    If you think that’s more like a price for a car than for a jacket, they were selling those in the mall too.

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    But they didn’t even have price tags on those. I assume you get a discount for it coming pre-sponsored by Shell.

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    There was one store where we could afford to shop, and they did not have what we needed.

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    We did manage to find some high fashion at a different mall though.

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    Bright colours are in, or were in whenever these weren’t the cheapest pants in the store.

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    You always want to make sure you’re staying on top of the retro fashions.

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    Kerri will be sporting a women’s version of the snowpants, without the classy suspenders.

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    Once she adjusts her hair you’ll see it’s the same Unisex pair of ski goggles and gloves. That’s what you get with a budget of $25 for the set.

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    And our high fashion shopping spree was complete!

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  • Milan Castle

    There’s a castle in Milan. It is pretty impressive at night.

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    It looks cool during the day too but not as dramatic.

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    We just walked through the courtyard and around the outside so we’ll never know if it was Kerri’s favourite castle.

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  • Rocchetta Mattei

    In the hills of Tuscany lies a castle. 

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    The castle was abandoned, but recently completed renovations to reopen it to the public.

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    What makes the castle so special you may wonder.

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    Well it is it’s location.

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    The castle was built as a place for the rich to come and get various “cures” as there is lots of energy flowing here.

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    These “cures” were offered by this man.  This window dedicates the room to celebrating his 90th birthday, because he thought his cures would make him virtually immortal. But he died before he got to use the room.

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    He built this castle with a variety of different styles. No room was the same.

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    It had lots of water and this fountain would spray all over the place.

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    All different types of materials and colours were used.

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    It has a bit of a Moorish look to it.

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    The views from inside were good.

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    It was hard to photograph because so many things were at strange angles.

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    They covered the metal frames with concrete modeled to look like tree bark to give it a more natural look.

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    Not part of the plan were these scorpions which were dead inside the light fixture. Our guides were freaked out by that, I thought it had something to do with energies and empowering the room.

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    This was a pentagonal shaped room. I thought the floor was cool because of the spiral. Apparently the spiral meant something, I thought it just makes sense as an easy way to build a floor with a pentagonal shape. 

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    The chapel looked very Escher like.

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    See what I mean.

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    Those ceiling panels are painted because they did spare a lot of expenses.

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    It looks pretty convincing though.

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    Here’s looking down.

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    It was a very funky room.

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    They don’t know what this says. It is written in Coptic and they haven’t gotten around to translating it yet.

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    This is a very nervous yoga posing individual holding up the archway – with her legs crossed! That takes skill.

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    Here’s another weird ceiling.

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    Another courtyard that looks different from the previous ones.

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    Here’s Kerri at the only facilities of the entire place. Oddly enough it doesn’t drain out the castle directly but rather into the main courtyard which seems rather disgusting.

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    Here’s looking where the toilet drains to. They also said he used to keep peacocks in there.

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    This rooms was blue due to the blue stained glass on all the windows.

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    Again sparing all the expenses these look like wood, but are actually compressed paper to make these cool ceiling panels.

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  • Pisa

    Everything looks tilted in Pisa, the road, the cars the tower.

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    Before visiting the tower we walked around the grounds to see the duomo and the baptistry.

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    The duomo was very fancy but the columns looked a bit strange with all the different marble used with no pattern.

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    The bapitistry was undergoing some room renovations as well.

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    Here’s the tower, no idea why everyone seems to think it leans.

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    It looks just fine from this angle.

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    Looking up the inside looks just fine too. Except for that wire that goes from the centre to the wall as it hangs “straight” down.

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    The stairs are pretty wide in comparison to many staircases we have walked up and down.

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    They are disorientating as you lean left, forward, right and back as you climb.

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    The marble has been walked on lots and shows the wear over the centuries.

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    It had some bells at the top.

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    The view was really nice.

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    Normally the pictures you see of this lawn are covered with people “holding” up the tower. In the winter they close the lawn to let it recover.

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    This was a neat looking church off in the distance. We walked close to it and it was less neat looking than we thought.

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    Here’s Kerri leaning on the tower. The top level is actually less slanted. They kinked the tower twice while building it to try to correct the lean.

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    The building in front of it is the duomo. It also leans, but not as much.

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    The inside of of the duomo was very impressive.

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    The chandelier is a recreation of the one Galileo watched swinging during mass and discovered that pendulums keep the same period no matter how far they swing.

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    Back and forth, back and forth. Even Galileo zoned out during church. 

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