A dreary November day in Milan
I have been absurdly derelict in my duties maintaining this blog. Since my last post, we have visited Spain and Maine (yes, soon you will see my ‘rain in Spain falls Mainely on the plains post).
A recent trip to Milan, Italy has taken me out of my doldrums and I’m ready to start posting again.
I went to Milan over Thanksgiving break to visit Tony, an old friend of mine, who is teaching at Bocconi University. It’s been over 5 years since my last trip to Italy and I don’t often make it to northern Italy so this was a nice trip—despite the awful weather.
First the good news–it was the first time in the last three trips abroad that I didn’t get deathly ill (Spain and Armenia were not good to me). And the bad news–this is the second trip in a row that I have taken a tumble (Spain down a set of spiral stairs leading to a bad ankle injury, Italy on a moving train with only minor consequences). Not sure what either of those situations tells me–other than it sucks getting older, I suppose.
Overall, despite the weather, the trip was good with the highlights being attending my first Opera (Elektra)–at La Scala–arguably the best Opera house in the world (if I am going to my first Opera, I wanted to do it in style). We were also able to visit Mantua to get a tour of Palazzo Te from Massimo, a colleague of Tony’s at Bocconi. Pallazo Te had a great Gerhard Richter/Titian exhibition while we were there and we were fortunate to have Massimo’s guidance and expertise as we visited (I believe he was instrumental in setting up the exhibit). The New York Times has a great review of the exhibition (click on link below):
Titian and Gerhard Richter: Keeping Faith With Painting, 5 Centuries Apart
Lastly, after countless trips to Italy, I was finally able to make it to Italy’s lake region and visited the town of Arona. I look forward to going back in the summer when there is (hopefully) much better weather.
As usual, I have a few pics to show:
