Milan ...

 I truly feel like we are living in a dream.  I know I've taken the above picture in just about every Italian city we have gone through, which is a lot, but I love it. I love watching my family walk down the Italian streets, with the Italian flag and just taking it all in.  We are truly blessed to be able to do the things we have done!

When I first started researching coming to Italy I was amazed at how many things I knew about, but I didn't know they were in Italy.  One of them being the picture of the Last Supper.  I stumbled upon it and we decided we were too close to not come and see it while we were here.  We booked the tickets back when we were in Sicily and were extremely lucky/blessed to be able to get tickets on a day that would work for us.  They only let a limited number of people in each day and they sell out months in advance.  So, a day trip to Milan was born!  Another beautiful city, another day in Italy!

Our day started out normal, get out of the house a few minutes later than we expected, drive down to the train station that we would take to go to downtown Milan so we didn't have to do a lot of walking but that didn't turn out like we had hoped.  We almost made it through our 2 month stay in Italy without encountering a STRIKE, but no, on the day we needed the metro they decided to not work.  That was funny to explain to the kids.  Owen still says "I don't want to work" when we go to a train station to ride a metro.  Kind of funny.  We are glad Jake is not scared to drive in a down town city so he drove us right down town to the parking garage right by the huge Duomo of Milan. It was quite an amazing site!  Unbelievable really.  The Gothic architecture look is quite spectacular.

 Then came our trek across Milan to this nice little church that the Last Supper painting was in.  We ate our lunch on the bench outside and waited for our tour time.  It was a beautiful, warm day in Italy and we were glad about that!  You are allowed 15 minutes in the room with the painting and it was amazing.  You walk through these two separate little dividing rooms that close behind you before they will open the next door to regulate the air that goes into the room with the painting.  You walk into the room and the painting is HUGE.  It was amazingly beautiful.  I actually got quite emotional there looking at it and taking in its meaning and the powerful scene it depicts. It was truly something I would never have though I'd see in person, but so extremely glad I did.  You cannot take pictures of the painting, so I got one off of google so my kids could remember what they got to see.  On the opposite side of the Last Supper is a painting of the crucifixion of Christ.  It was just as spectacular.  Brought tears to my eyes again.  What an amazing thing Christ did for us so that we could live with him again.  Truly breath-taking!

The kids were SO good and walked quite a ways, we just had to stop and get gelato on the way back to our car.  YUMMY!  What a great day ... now onto Germany!