What was supposed to be a leisurely stroll in Milan turned out to be a three hour delay drinking coffee at Athens Airport. We still arrived in Milan with plenty of time to get to La Scala Opera House for a ballet. The story behind Coppélia goes something like this:
Act 1: Boy and girl are in love. Boy's eye wanders to beautiful mechanical ballerina whom the boy thinks is a woman.
Act 2: Trying to meet the beautiful ballerina/doll, boy is captured and drugged by the maniacal doll maker. Girl rescues boy by pretending to be the mechanical doll come to life (1).
Act 3: Boy marries girl, and dancers dance in the town square to show their virtuosity.
The next day, we had tickets to see the first showing of DeVinci's The Last Supper mural at Santa Maria delle Grazie church (2). Tickets are timed so that 35 people are given 15 minutes in the refractory, entered through a series of waiting rooms with automatic doors.
The Last Supper is a mural, painted on the refrectory's north wall. Air bombing during the Second World War destroyed the east wall and the ceiling, but left the north wall intact.
(1) This is similar to the event at the end of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, with very similar dance movements and music, as the heros Caractacus Potts and Truly Scrumptious rescue their children (and all the village children) from the clutches of the evil Barron Bomburst.
(2) Booked months in advance.
At La Scala
Final bows by the large cast
Exterior view of La Scala
Shopping Mall from the 1800s
The Duomo
Somewhere forgot their copy of the History of European Urology at the hotel
Tactile representation of the Last Supper for the visually impaired
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