Milan!

Emily, Jo and I had been planning our trip to Milan for over a month. We were so excited that we were able to get reservations to see Da Vinci's Last Supper AND opera tickets for the weekend that we were going to be there. Despite a few minor mishaps and pouring rain, we had an amazing weekend.

The Duomo in Milan is absolutely amazing. The facade is probably one of the most ornate in Europe. The interior really cool too and there was even an organ playing! We also got to climb the roof of the cathedral and see the city from above.

However, the highlight of our trip was definitely the Opera at La Scala opera house. We had tickets to see "The Merry Widow," which is actually a German opera, but there were English subtitles. The scenery and the costumes were incredible. But probably my favorite part of the Opera was the fact that we had our OWN opera box! If you're ever in Milan, I recommend getting tickets to an opera. Definitely the experience of a lifetime!

The Last Supper was also really awesome to see in person. But, unfortunately, we couldn't take any pictures. We only got to look at the fresco for about 15 or 20 minutes, but our tour guides gave us so much information about it that we probably would have never known otherwise. Since the fresco is so deteriorated, there is actually only about 30 percent of the original fresco, the rest has been restored with water color.

On Saturday before we headed back to Siena, we took a train to Lake Como, to the little town of Varenna. The lake is in the Alps and is on the border between Italy and Switzerland. We saw our first snow of the season in the mountaintops, but the temperature was really nice in Varenna.
Two interesting facts about Lake Como: George Cloony has a house there, and it's also where one of the new Star Wars films was filmed.
Anyway, we only had a few hours in Varenna, so we spent some time exploring the town, found a sweet pier to relax on, and then had some great panini's before getting on the train back to Milan.