the Grand Tour blog

Milan to Cremona

Back to the station to reclaim my case – €5.20 for 6 hours, compared to €4 a day in Germany – and bought a ticket for Cremona in the machine. The train departed ten minutes late, and the driver tried hard to make up time. Or maybe he always drives like that! Much of the journey is on single track, through very pleasant woodland, and we must have been travelling at 60-70mph with the leaves inches from the train. The sun came out as we pulled out of Milan‘s stazione centrale.

Cremona is bigger and looks more commercial than I expected. My hotel in a very narrow and attractive street. Someone down the road playing the violin badly. Went out for a wander round in the late evening sun. The facade of the Duomo in its big square is fabulous. Grabbed some photos in case the weather changes. Had a good meal in the hotel restaurant, and got the recipe. 

[Posted 28 May]

Milan: the Duomo

From La Scala I went back to the Duomo. A few photos inside, but it's very dark, in stark contrast to the highly decorated pinky-white marble exterior, and photography (which is not officially allowed but everyone is doing it) is not helped by ugly bright mercury lights high up at roof level. It's impressive, with its five aisles, but not to me very attractive. It started raining very hard while I was inside, and I sheltered for a while until it eased, then walked the kilometer or so to the church of Santa Maria della Grazie, to see if there was any chance of getting in to see Leonardo's Last Supper, as I had't been able to book. No. And the church itself was closed until 3:00.

Very wet by that time so I found a café near the church for some lunch. When the rain stopped I trekked back to the Duomo and – after much security checking – climbed the 160+ steps to the roof. A wonderful experience. Pattern pictures everywhere, looking down through the intricate tracery of the buttresses, and interesting shots of people on the lower level. Inspiration at last!

La Scala Milan

First to the station to leave my case for the day, and spent about 15 minutes finding the Left Luggage place (it's at the extreme right of the station, in the same corridor as the big street level ticket office). The loos are equally badly signposted, but are at the opposite end, one level up. Bought a couple of Metro tickets, just €1 a time, and set off for the Duomo. 

The weather was very dull, and threatening to rain; in fact they told me in the hotel that rain was forecast for 11:00 until 14:00. So I walked through the splendid Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II to La Scala, to see if any visiting restrictions were posted for today; just as well I did as there is a strike in the opera house this afternoon. Bought a museum ticket and was directed first to the auditorium, into one of the boxes about halfway up the six rows, and opposite the stage. Spent quite a long time enjoying the fabulous interior as my eyes adapted to the very dim light. Then to the museum itself, consisting largely of portraits and busts of the great singers and composers in La Scala's history. Toscanini of course, with the distinctive moustache; Caruso with short hair and a sort of quiff, with his broad shoulders; Sartini's painting of Maria Callas, stunning in black to match her eyes and hair; and many others. Upstairs many prints of stage sets, and an old drawing of the auditorium with no seats, the great and the good promenading.

Late arrival

Just after the train announcement of ten minutes to Milano, we slowed down and came to a stop due, apparently, to a problem at the station. Ended up arriving 25 minutes late, at 10:50. Luckily Hotel Garda is less than five minutes walk, and it took me longer to escape from Mussolini's grand edifice than to find the hotel.

First Class to Milano

We're batting along through the very rural countryside of eastern France. I don't know the speed because TGV don't have a display in the coach like the fast German trains, but it can't be far off 200mph. I paid a quite modest €18 extra for this spacious First Class seat for the seven hour journey from Paris to Milan, though amazingly it doesn't have a power point so I can't charge my iPhone. The weather has been very grey all day, with intermittent rain including when I went for short walk from Gare de Lyon to have a look at the Seine. No problem getting across Paris from Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon on the RER, except that I chose the one ticket machine that appeared to work but wouldn't accept my coins; a kindly young French lady confirmed it was the machine at fault and not me.

SNCF waited until 10 minutes before departure before displaying the platform for the Milan train, and there was then a huge queue on the platform at what appeared to be an ad hoc passport check. We left six minutes late, with people still wandering around the train ten minutes later. I had to turn someone out of my seat, and soon afterwards was challenged by an unsmiling and unapologetic French woman who should have been in the same seat in the next coach. On the concourse at Gare de Lyon, a family going away with many cases and bags, a small obedient dog, and a cat in a cat basket taking great interest in the busy station.

Departure

The time has come at last. After a good concert with the OAE at the Queen Elizabeth Hall last night, I found my (relatively) low-cost hotel near St Pancras -- the Euro Hotel in Cartwright Gardens -- was well above average for its type. A good breakfast, walked to St Pancras and was in the Eurostar departure lounge by 08:45. I'm travelling in an aisle seat, not my favourite. On Grand Tour 1, the first music I heard (in Bonn) was Beethoven's Coriolan overture, and it was Coriolan that opened the concert last night.

Check list checking

A week of final preparations, adding things to my multiple to-do lists as fast as I check them off. Confirmed all the images have been transferred to the computer from the Nikon D300 and P5000 memory cards, backed them up and deleted everything from the cards. Charged the camera batteries. Finalised the printed backup information and tickets, and taped it all in two envelopes under the lining of the case so it doesn’t get left anywhere.

Fiddled with packing, though some difficulty making final decisions on clothing. And no way I can carry the Epson P2000 [a portable disk for image storage] as backup, so I'm a little concerned in case anything happens to the PowerBook. I guess I’d just have to shoot JPEG only, not RAW+JPG as I normally do, and probably buy more cards.

Phoned the hotel in Milan to say I will be arriving late; the train is due in at 10:30pm, and I’m told that some TGV-Artesia trains can run quite late. Relieved to hear the hotel has my reservation – I’d had a slight fear I would arrive in the middle of the night and they’d know nothing about me!

On Grand Tour 1 I carried the Rough Guides to Germany and Austria, but never referred to them except to look up restaurants a few times. And the books are heavy. So this time I’ve scanned the restaurant pages for Bologna, Florence, Rome, Lucca, Venice and Vicenza; no problem with copyright, I think, as this is strictly for my personal use. Adjusted the scans, saved them as JPGs and also combined them into a PDF for easier 2-up printing (which I almost forgot to do).

Transferred the restaurant JPGs to the Files app on the iPhone, together with a PDF of the Cremona-Busseto-Bologna train timetables from Trenitalia. The timetables now show fares for these regional trains – just €2.80 for Cremona-Busseto. Files was behaving itself, and not causing the Mac Finder to hang as it has ever since I upgraded to the full app; I did quit most other applications on the Mac first, which might (or might not) have made a difference.

Even spent some time relaxing in the sun today, between sorting out paperwork and fettling the suitcase.

Enough planning already!

Updated the Highlights list with the latest bookings, plus details of Roma Pass etc., Rome bus and metro tickets, and Florence free-entry locations. Printed all modified pages, 2-up. Added the bookings and a couple of other times to the Itinerary and printed a final copy. Made sure I have backup copies of the most important stuff to bury in the bottom of the suitcase. Electronic copies of almost everything on the iPhone.

That's it: the end of planning. I've probably done too much and I certainly don't feel like doing any more!

Final bookings

Several highlights on my list must be booked in advance. First, Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper (Cenacolo Vinciano), in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. One of the world's great paintings, the 15 x 29 foot mural was completed in 1498. Despite its popularity and the restricted number of visitors, booking doesn't seem to be possible very far in advance, hence my late attempt to do so. But a week ago the website showed it fully booked to the end of June – 8:15 to 18:45, six days a week – with no further dates. Since then they've released July and August (no use to me), and most of July has already gone. In fact I called the reservation line and they did have a slot available on my day in Milan, but it was too late in the day. I may try for a cancellation or no-show when I get there.

After much thought about whether I could get to an 8:30 booking at the Uffizi gallery in Florence, I find they don't have any availability until midday anyway, on my chosen day. Nor on the next day. So I tried booking for 12:15, but then their bank wouldn't accept my currency card. I gave it a while to release the ticket and tried again with another card, which also failed. Eventually I phoned the booking number and quickly got a booking reference for 12:15; collect the ticket and pay the fee when I get there. Easy!

Booked a 12:30 visit to the Giotto Frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, through their website. The frescoes – considered one of the most important masterpieces of Western art – narrate events in the lives of the Virgin Mary and Christ, and cover all the walls of the Chapel. They were commissioned by Enrico degli Scrovegni and completed by Giotto in 1305. Using the booking reference I must collect my ticket from the nearby Eremitani Museum ticket office before 11:30, which should give time for the journey from Venice without rushing; the Chapel and Eremitani are not far from the station. There are a few other things on my list for Padova, of course, mainly exteriors.

Finally, a booking for Basilica San Marco in Venice, not mandatory but it ought to save some queuing. Quite easy to book on the VenetoInside website (linked from the Basilica website), although there was some confusion over booking fees due to their automated system sending the wrong email. Quickly sorted, and I now have the all-important barcode for entry. The silly thing about Basilica San Marco is that the visit is meant to last only ten minutes, hardly enough time to walk from one end to the other. I'm hoping that by loitering in a quiet place I will be able to escape being chased out. 

That iPhone power adapter

A while ago I posted on the impossibility of buying, in the UK, Apple's neat continental power adapter for the iPhone. But now I have one, many thanks to a friend in France. It's certainly a slimmer and more pocketable thing than the UK charger combined with a converter:

The price, of course, is pretty outrageous, and much of it must be due to the comprehensive packaging:

But it's nice to get these things right. And I know I'll appreciate it when on tour.