Geneva and Milan with Mom and Dad - August 2-9, 2010

On Monday morning August 2 my parents got to Geneva. I stopped at the airport before work to pick them up and made sure they got to their hotel. It was uneventful and easy-going until we got to the hotel and they both got stuck in the elevator with two maids for a while. All I could do was sit out front and wait for them to get out, so I waited. It wasn’t too long, though I’m sure it seemed longer for them. My week consisted of going to work and then meeting them for dinner, which was great. It was also the week of the Fetes de Geneve, Geneva’s big celebration week. There were booths, rides, bars, and stages set up all along both sides of the lakeshore and the city was packed with people having a good time. While they didn’t really get to see the lakeshore in its normal non-crowded way, it was still good.

Tuesday night was an exciting dinner because I ate beef for the first time since about 1994. We went for entrecote at the very Genevois Café de Paris. It tasted like meat. I didn’t not like it, but I would’ve been just as happy with some grilled vegetables. Wednesday night my coworker Jamie had a gathering at his place so Mom and Dad came over, too, and got to meet all the people I’ve been working with this summer. Thursday was the night for fondue. So much cheese. It was delicious, though as Mom says, probably not a sustainable meal that you could eat every night. Friday afternoon came and I left work early to meet them at the train station. We had tickets on the afternoon train direct to Milan.

MILAN

Our ride to Milan was pretty funny. Mom and Dad were crammed into a seat across from two women who had three children on the laps. These seats were made for two people, seated in groups of four. In Mom and Dad’s little four-person grouping there were four adults and three kids under 8. I just laughed from across the aisle. I was sitting next to some French college kids who just slept the whole time.

The scenery on the train to Milan was really quite beautiful. The train goes along the northern shore of Lake Geneva, through Lausanne, Vevey, Montreux, off into Sion and Brig, then down into Italy through Domodossola and along the shore of Lake XXXXX. At 4 hours it was a little long, but not unmanageable.

We stayed at Hotel Berna in Milan which was close to the train station and actually a really nice hotel. We were tired on Friday night so we didn’t do much, just took a nap and went to dinner near the hotel. I ordered some normal pasta and Mom and Dad ordered some fish dish for two. The ugliest fish I’ve ever seen arrived at the table and in about 15 seconds the waitress had cleaned the whole fish and divided it into even portions for Mom and Dad along with the pasta. She was fast and good!

Saturday morning we woke up early, ate our delicious hotel breakfast buffet, and headed over to where our tour bus was going to take us around Milan on a half-day guided tour. This was a great idea since it took us to all the sites and gave us at least a little explanation for things. Our first stop on the tour was La Scala, we then went through the Galeria and out to the Duomo. The Duomo, which was just recently restored looks amazing, both inside and out. It is also apparently the third largest cathedral. The bus took us around the city after that, through the old city gates and past many interesting sites. Our next stop was the Castel Sforza which served as both an intimidating fortress and a royal residence. The museum in the fortress has a magnificent sculpture by Michelangelo, which was great to see. We then hurriedly boarded the bus again and raced over to Santa Maria della Grazie to make our appointment to see the Last Supper. Seeing it in person and fully restored is really impressive. It is a huge wall-sized work of art with an incredible amount of detail. Since it was not painted in the normal fashion of the time, as a frescoe, the colors had faded quite a bit over the years. The roof of this room in the church was also blown off during WW II, and while the painting wasn’t heavily damaged by the war itself, being exposed to the elements didn’t help the situation.

After our tour Mom and Dad took a nap and I went on a short run through I Giardini Pubblici, the big public park in Milan. Lots of runners were out and it was a nice evening. What we didn’t think about when we booked a visit to Milan is that August is the time when all Italians take vacations. This became apparent when we thought we would be able to find dinner on Saturday night. We wandered about a mile down the street only to find several restaurants that were closed for the holidays. Mom was cranky but Dad and I persevered until we found a place that was open. We had to go to a hotel and ask them for a recommendation and then take a taxi there, but we made it. It was a great little place right off the main shopping street. The food in Italy was, by far, the best food of their visit. Nothing beats fresh pasta. After dinner we walked up the shopping street, had our evening gelato, and looked at the Duomo at night before taking a taxi back to the hotel.

Sunday morning was another adventurous day. We went to the other train station in Milan and boarded a train for Lake Como. The train only takes about an hour to get there, which wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately, none of us had looked up anything to do in Como, so we didn’t know much about it. The lake is huge and to take the ferry even halfway up takes a couple hours. We settled for an hour long tourist ferry to see some of the towns and villas closer to Como. The boat was nice and we caught a glimpse of a funicular heading up the hillside, another good serendipitous find!

We got off the ferry and walked over to the funicular. It was crowded, like any tourist attraction, but we managed to jam about 100 people in a funicular clearly only built for 30. It made it up the hill and we got off to look at the views. Nearby there was a great little restaurant overlooking the lake. A great place to have a late lunch! While going up the hill we spotted a cathedral in town, so after we got back down we walked over to the cathedral for a look. It was, as usual, a very nice looking cathedral…although it was closed and we couldn’t go in, but the outside was nice. Back to Milan I went on another long run, this time through the park behind Sforza. This night we didn’t make the same mistake for dinner and asked our concierge to call and find a place that was open. He did so we got in a cab to go there. Sadly, our cab driver dropped us off in the middle of nowhere. He thought he knew where we were going, but clearly he didn’t. We wandered up the street and found an open pharmacy where the woman working was kind enough to call us a cab and help us wave it down on the street. We made it to our restaurant about an hour after our reservation, but they were happy to seat us and the food was great.

The train to Geneva was very early the next morning so we were up at 7. This time we had much better company on the train. Mom, Dad, and I were all sitting in one group of seats and there was an old Italian woman from Bergamo sitting next to me. Across the aisle was her brother, a middle-aged guy from Paris, and a young couple. The Bergamese woman (she said this was very different from being Italian) chatted with us all the whole way to Lausanne, where her and her brother had to change trains. She spoke Italian, some French, and some German….but I managed to speak enough Italian to figure out what was going on.

As soon as we got to Geneva I went right to work, then met Mom and Dad after work for a last meal in Geneva at Chez Ma Cousine, Geneva’s cheap chicken joint where you get half a chicken, fries, and a salad for 15 francs.

The next morning I stopped by their hotel and had the buffet breakfast with them before saying goodbye and heading to work.