Italy Day 9 Milan & St. Ambrose
Our final full day was a good typical last day, do somethings, but not too much and get into the room at a reasonable hour to get ourselves ready for departure. We began the morning with packing our luggage and mailing it back home since we felt it would be far easier and inexpensive with the connecting flights, and a possibility of being charged twice for our bags from separate carriers, the annoyance of modern airliners. For future I will fly direct, and if needed drive to a location that will support that. Since this was my first time booking everything on my own for international travel I had a learning curve, which I exceeded my own expectations of minimal issues, but there were definitely some minor things I’ve learned to add to an even more enjoyable visit my time of travel.
After mailing our bags we went to a nice local café where I enjoyed a nice espresso to get my day started, and Monica ordered a Veal Milanese, another local favorite. It was an amazing piece of meat with potatoes. From here we took a look at the Duomo of Milan. The lines were long, and the express online tickets were closed, so instead of spending our day in line, we chose to go in the entrance for the faithful where they had a section quarantined for prayer, sadly it was not in front of the tabernacle, but it was nice none the less to see a small view of the inside.
It was a further reminder of the blessings we have in America, and places like St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which is a similar style building, with just as much beautiful art, and they recently did a $100 million dollar renovation, yet the doors are always open, there are no lines, and no fees to walk through the door, all are welcomed. While it can be challenging with the tourist in NYC roaming the church while others try to worship, it was a humble reminder of how good we have it in the USA, and the good work Cardinal Dolan tries to do in his thankless job, as are all bishops and people of authority in our world.
After our visit to the duomo, we went to the local shopping district across the street, and took a look at some things, Monica had certain items she wanted to pick up throughout the trip, and I tried my best to accommodate those stops. It was an interesting experience walking through their mall, and the layout of it. As I tried to find the bathroom, I was told it was on the 4th floor, so I made my way up there. As I wandered trying to find the bathroom I asked an employee where the bathroom was, they said 4th floor, I asked “What floor are we on?” They replied “the 1st floor”. I was surprised as I had traveled 3 floors already, but realized it’s because they have negative level floors in some buildings in Italy. It was an interesting moment.
From here we made our way to one of my highlighted destinations, to visit the tomb of St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, and influence on St. Augustine of Hippo. St. Ambrose is special to me, considering I feel called to unique vocation, just as his was, when he was named bishop before he was even a Catholic. We were able to attend the 6:30 pm mass, which was very interesting. Milan has been known to have a slightly different style of liturgy, and it showed as we were praying. Some parts of the mass were in different sequence, and it seemed like they said a prayer or 2 I did not recognize in Italian, while leaving the “Agnus Dei” out before we received the Eucharist. This was all fascinating to me, as Milan is known from my understanding of being an influence on the quote “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” since there was a variety of liturgies in the early church and places like Milan had their own, the people were encouraged to follow the local ways of practice. Their confessionals were different as well, and that fascinated me.
Closing out the night we found a great place that had homemade pasta, in a very home style Milanese way. It was very authentic as the place claimed to carry on a family recipe for ravioli for several generations, and after that we went to a nice gelato place and had our last serving of gelato before heading to bed. The alarm was set, and we were prepared for our return home in the morning.
