After all the excitement of the past several days, we decided to take it a bit easier today.  We hadn’t planned or reserved anything, and didn’t really have any must-see agenda items.  (The biggest attraction here is the Duomo cathedral/museum complex, and we half-heartedly checked for tickets in the morning, but none were available.  Given all the art and churches that we’ve seen, no one was too devastated by this.)  Bob and I let the girls sleep, and it was a record 11:30 before we made it out of the hotel.

Sforzesco Castle

I was googling “top things to do in Milan” and having trouble coming up with a good agenda for the day — everything was advertisements for fancy guided tours and/or more museums — when I finally had the bright idea of googling “free things to do in Milan”, which gave us a couple of better ideas.  I plotted out a walking route and we set off for our first destination, Parco Sempione.

Milan seems to be full of beautiful parks, and this one might have been the crown jewel of them all.  We saw online that there was an aquarium within the park — Nadia loves aquariums — so we made that our first stop.  It was in a beautiful old building with a cool fountain out front, and — being pretty small and low-key — was the perfect antidote to all the crowds that we’ve been encountering everywhere.  We spent a relaxing hour or two strolling through the exhibits and gardens.  (One of the coolest things was that in a random corner of the basement, near the bathrooms, we found a gorgeous shell collection — and saw that some of them were from the collections of Linnaeus and Lemarck.)  Total cost: 13 euro (about $15) for all four of us.

Continuing through the park, we next came upon the Sforzesco Castle.  This was a large, imposing structure with multiple segments and courtyards.  The interior housed an art museum, which we didn’t go into, but just the exterior areas were very impressive.  (I was tempted to buy tickets for the Panoramic Battlements Walk, but wasn’t sensing a lot of interest from the troops in climbing a bunch of stairs.)

Next on the agenda was a walk past the Duomo, to at least see the exterior.  Here we found the crowds again.  The area of Milan where we’re staying is very urban and modern, but we found that the area around the Duomo is much more like Florence, but with even more beautiful architecture everywhere you looked.  (Despite the crowds, walking was considerably easier because Milan has created actual pedestrian areas, rather than streets that appear to be pedestrian until a random taxi or delivery truck edges by.)  It was definitely worth the trip to see the Duomo and all the amazing buildings around it.

That’s a real flamingo!

The restaurants around the Duomo were all crowded and expensive, so we veered off the tourist track again to find a place for a late lunch.  We found ourselves walking through what was clearly a wealthy area of quiet streets and picturesque buildings.  At one point we saw a tall wrought iron fence surrounding an area of greenery, with a few people peering inside.  To our surprise we found that it was a large enclosed yard full of flamingos.  We didn’t see any signs or public access, so we can only assume this was some rich person’s backyard.  Eventually we got out of the wealthy area

Maybe Lanie didn’t want to share her pasta

and into a normal city neighborhood, to reach the fresh pasta restaurant that Nadia had found online.  (They had about 8 different types of fresh pasta and even more types of sauces and cheeses, and you could construct your own meal.  All were delicious.)

Next we headed to another park — the Gardens of Porta Venezia.  This one houses a planetarium, where we were planning to take in a show.  Unfortunately we found that the only shows that day were intended for children, so we had to skip that part of the agenda.  We still enjoyed strolling the cool, shady paths of the park, watching the fashionable Milanese pass by, and the dogs playing in the large leash-free field.  (Lots of people

We didn’t have time to check out the Natural History museum, in the same park as the planetarium.

in Italy have daschunds, which are particularly fun and comical to watch.)

Our last stop was the Secret Rooms escape room.  Our family always enjoys escape rooms — and we usually do pretty well at them — but we hadn’t fit one in yet on this trip.  Unfortuately, we found that Zoe is a key reason for our success, and we didn’t do all that well without her.  We had to get several hints and were a minute or two late in finishing the challenge.  Still, it was a fun way to spend an hour.  On the way back to the apartment we rewarded ourselves with pastries from a local bakery.

There was a soccer game happening in Milan that evening, which Bob and Nadia had considered going to — but the 8:45pm start time was off-putting, given that we had to get up for our flight home at 5:30 the next morning.  As a compromise, we tried to find a bar to watch the first part of the game — but sports bars seem a little harder to find here than at home.  We tried a couple of places that didn’t work out, so eventually we just had a delicious Indian dinner and went back to our apartment for packing and an early bedtime.

The lovely courtyard in our apartment building