Photo credit: Carol Madigan

 The remaining two days in Milan were to be framed by sightseeing, namely the Duomo de Milano, or the Milan cathedral, a castle and a basilica, neither of whose names I’m not bothering to look up. I’m not whining, mind you. I am quite happy to sightsee with Carol, because I can see how happy it makes her. And it’s my way of giving back for her complete buy-in to my train-is-the-destination philosophy of travel. If the occasional medieval edifice is the price to pay for Carol’s happy companionship aboard trains, I am happy to pay it. Or perhaps I should employ a more perfect tense: It is a price I am happy to have had paid. Or, better, it is a price I shall have been happy to have been paid – whatever the heck that perfect tense may have happened to be. What I’m trying to say is I like it better when it’s over and done with.

“I could tell the gargoyles were snickering behind my back, as I made my increasingly frantic way along the roof like some Quasimodo who’d suddenly had a change of heart trying to woo the sweet Esmeralda with his daring do.”

   The basilica started out great: it was closed by the time we got there.  Plus, it appeared a café had popped out of nowhere alongside it. The bad news was the basilica reopened in the afternoon; the good news was I could be sat at the café while Carol explored the church’s innards. It was at the Duomo that my luck seriously ran out.

   The tickets were for the elevator ride to the rooftop. The rooftop had neither a tower nor a balcony. It consisted of geometrically unscalable slate-clad peaks, parapets and promontories all sandwiched among scaffolding as restoration work on the gargoyles, flying buttresses and spires continued apace. It was more of a hard hat area than an architectural point of interest. I could tell the gargoyles were snickering behind my back, as I made my increasingly frantic way along the roof like some Quasimodo who’d suddenly had a change of heart trying to woo the sweet Esmeralda with his daring do. Meanwhile, the sweet Esmeralda was bouncing up and down the slants and steps with the surefootedness of a bighorn sheep. 

   It wasn’t that there was much of a view from up here anyway. Milan was bombed heavily during the war, and the rebuilt modern Milan skyline looked more like downtown Houston. Get me down from here, o lord, and I will do only good works for the rest of my days.

   There was no elevator back down that we could find, only an endless stone spiral stairwell, windowless and narrow, with no handrail. You had to brace your arms against the walls to keep your balance. It took two hours to get down to the ground (although Carol showed me on her watch it was less than five minutes). Nevertheless, I took back my vow to do good works, and threw in a curse when I reached terra finally.

   Carol sensed my disfavor with the experience (she wasn’t much keen on not finding an elevator down either) and magnanimously took the castle off the remainder of our itinerary for the day. “Let’s just head back to the canal (Navigly), have  a bottle and call it a day,” she offered.

   I love this woman.