Saint Bartholomew Flayed (Milan, Italy)

Bartholomew was one of the twelve apostles and his death is one that is still debated today. Some say he was crucified upside down with other apostles, another speaks of him being kidnapped and drowned while the most famous and depicted through works of art is that he was flayed and then beheaded.

A statue in the Duomo in Milan displays the flaying of Bartholomew and depicts him draped in a blanket of his own skin. Given this horrific depiction of his death it isn’t surprising that one of the most famous quotes attributed to him is:

“Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you cannot bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are beyond the pain.”

Saint Bartholomew

Milan Cathedral

Entering the main square in Milan from the subway station below you are awestruck by the beauty of the cathedral in front of you. It is an absolutely elaborate cathedral and a wonderful display of Gothic architecture. 700 years in the making the cathedral was finally completed in the mid 1700s and has been a major tourist attraction to the city recently although it still offers several daily services for the people of Milan and you must be a parishioner to enter certain areas of the church during certain times.

The Milan Cathedral – Milan, Italy

Mark Twain is much more eloquent with his explanation of the Milan Cathedral than I could ever be. From his book – The Innocents Abroad:

Howsoever you look at the great cathedral, it is noble, it is beautiful! Wherever you stand in Milan or within seven miles of Milan, it is visible and when it is visible, no other object can chain your whole attention. Leave your eyes unfettered by your will but a single instant and they will surely turn to seek it. It is the first thing you look for when you rise in the morning, and the last your lingering gaze rests upon at night. Surely it must be the princeliest creation that ever brain of man conceived.

At nine o’clock in the morning we went and stood before this marble colossus. The central one of its five great doors is bordered with a bas-relief of birds and fruits and beasts and insects, which have been so ingeniously carved out of the marble that they seem like living creatures–and the figures are so numerous and the design so complex that one might study it a week without exhausting its interest. On the great steeple–surmounting the myriad of spires–inside of the spires–over the doors, the windows–in nooks and corners–every where that a niche or a perch can be found about the enormous building, from summit to base, there is a marble statue, and every statue is a study in itself! Raphael, Angelo, Canova–giants like these gave birth to the designs, and their own pupils carved them. Every face is eloquent with expression, and every attitude is full of grace. Away above, on the lofty roof, rank on rank of carved and fretted spires spring high in the air, and through their rich tracery one sees the sky beyond. In their midst the central steeple towers proudly up like the mainmast of some great Indiaman among a fleet of coasters.

His description goes on for much longer in the 18th chapter of that book. You can read the full chapter here on the Classic Literature site of About.com

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II (Milan, Italy)

One of the world’s oldest shopping malls – the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, Italy – is an architectural marvel. Four stories high with a beautiful vaulted ceiling sitting over the main walkway connecting the city’s two main squares the Piazza del Duomo (city’s main church – Il Duomo) with that of the Piazza della Scala (the historic and world famous opera house).

Milan Shopping Mall

We spent a few nights in Milan during our trip to Italy (almost exactly one year ago – time flies!) and one of those nights we sat in this mall at one of the restaurants overlooking the walkway drinking wine and making up stories about the people passing by and sitting around us. It was one of our favorite nights there and we didn’t really do very much (except drink a lot of very good, yet very cheap wine).

Who knew a mall could look so nice?

The mall in Milan, Italy – named the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II – is one of the oldest shopping malls in the world. This is unlike the malls scattered around America today that are essentially an eyesore (for the most part) to architecture – built more for function than for style. This was clearly built for style.

Photo of the Day – Milan Mall

Now that’s a Church!

Taking over five hundred years to build the Duomo in Milan (Milan Cathedral) is one of the most impressive buildings I’ve ever been in. If you’ve been on this site enough you’d get the sense that I love church interiors and I could have spent all day inside this place taking pictures of it. The great thing about it is that they actually allow it. As long as you pay the photography fee of five Euros they didn’t seem to mind all of my HDRing that at points took two or three minutes for each set of shots given how dark the interior was. Of course I didn’t try to take out my travel tripod but I did have the camera setup on a greenpod and also a GorillaPod but as long as I had my bracelet on showing I made my donation they weren’t opposed to me firing away.

Photo of the Day – Interior of Il Duomo – Milan, Italy

The interior of the Milan Cathedral is expansive and their are fifty-two very large pillars (one for each week) supporting the massive ceiling above. Also notable in this picture is the red dot above the altar in the distance. This is the spot where (supposedly) one of the nails from Jesus crucifixion was placed when they were building it. Many Catholics make the pilgrimage to this church just to see this nail.

Making your Dreams a Reality

Read a post the other day from a full-time travel blogger who a few short years ago was a high school teacher and it resonated with me as I’m sure we’d all like to make some changes. No matter how small they are – simply doing the five things on this list will push you closer (I highly recommend checking her list out because the words are imperative). Especially the fourth one – too often I’m confronted with negative attitudes. I’m guilty of it far too often as well but I’ve gotten better over the last two years of pushing those feelings back down inside. Nothing has benefited me more than this and I have to imagine if others were a little more upbeat that good things would come to them as well.

Photo of the Day – Duomo in Milan

Early morning in Milan – an empty square in front of one of Europe’s most unique churches. All about the power of positivity.

Mussolini’s Masterpiece

Central Station in Milan, Italy was built during the Dictator Mussolini’s reign over Italy. Therefore, the look of the station – industrial, imposing and monumental – should be no surprise. It was built as a sign of the strength and power of Italy and today remains one of the few train stations in Italy that has continued to operate after WWII.

Photo of the Day – Monumental

The European rail system is so efficient that it makes the system in the US an embarrassment. I’ve heard it is better out east – where like Europe the cities are closer together – but in the Midwest the train from Chicago to Detroit (a four hour drive) takes anywhere from six to eight hours. In Europe, with the speed of the trains it is faster (and easier) to ride the rails in comparison to any other form of transportation.

We were in the Central Station waiting for our train to the beautiful Cinque Terre. If you ever stop there and want to take photos – you should know that the police do not like it. I was asked to stop and told that they do not allow photos without a permit. You can get a permit at a shop down the street but since we were heading out I decided not to file for it. The policeman was nice enough to let me fire off a few last shots but my hope of spending the half hour before our train ride getting a lot of good shots of this magnificent structure were dashed.

Milan Cathedral – Altar to St. Giovanni Buono

One of the side altars in the Milan Cathedral (Il Duomo) is the Altar dedicated to San Giovanni Buono who was a bishop in Milan during the 7th Century. The altar is huge and immediately draws your eye up to it. As you can probably tell in looking through other pictures on my website I love taking photos in churches – I’m not overly religious or anything like that but I believe the beauty and sanctity of these places is tremendous. The way they were built and designed to inspire and awe patrons is magnificent. This altar is another example of that beauty.

Photo of the Day – Altar to St. Giovanni Buono

They allow you to take photos in this church for a nominal fee (I think it was 3 or 4 Euro) but they don’t allow tripods and for good reason since it is always packed. Therefore, I had to use my handy little green pod (which is really just a little bean bag with a screw on it to hook the camera too) to take this picture and keep everything still for 15 – 30 seconds while the camera adjusted to the low light levels. The green pod while little turned out to be well worth the $20 investment as I used it quite a bit on this trip in churches and on roof tops where traditional tripods (and even the smaller, less obtrusive gorrilla pods) are not allowed.

If you are taking a trip anytime soon to Europe and plan to take indoor pictures I’d highly recommend buying one – they make them for all camera types – not just DSLRs. Here’s a link to their store with all the sizes.

Milan, Italy (Il Duomo)

I posted a picture I took at night of the Duomo a couple weeks back – this shot I took the following morning. The square was empty and I had the place to myself for what seemed like hours. It was quite a difference from the day before when the square had been packed with street vendors and other tourists. It really is a much different experience when you are able to walk around and view all the minute details without fear of bumping into someone else.

Photo of the Day – Statues of Il Duomo

The Duomo has 135 spires and over 3200 statues similar to the ones seen in this image around the exterior. All are attached to the building by a chain (I imagine one fell at some point thus prompting the chains) and they represent varying images, people, events of the bible. Take a look at the detail in the each of the figures and imagine that there are thousands of those surrounding the church. I walked all around the church, slowly, taking them all in. Still later in the day on our walk back from breakfast I noticed things that I hadn’t seen before. It really is a tremendous sight.

It was an amazing experience and though I’m glad we only stayed one night in Milan that one night was well worth it.

Big Changes for Flickr

If you aren’t using Flickr to store and share your photos the time to get on board is now. Yahoo! made big news today (in addition to the Tumblr purchase) by announcing some new and improved features for what was a slowly dying dinosaur of a website – Flickr. I, and a few other people still used it, but for the most part the more serious photographers were moving to 500px, Google+ and/or SmugMug. I use all the sites and I have to say the changes that Flickr made today would make this my recommended site for someone starting out to start sharing photos with others.

Some of new benefits/perks of the free account:

1) One Terabyte of data…yes one terabyte. That is ALOT of data and most users won’t ever fill that which is what Yahoo! is banking on. For comparison sake at Google the charge to store 1 TB of data is $50/month. This is a major shot over the data storage bow – as files get bigger this will come in handy so might as well get on board now.

2) I’m not an Android user but if you are there is a new app release coming up soon and the pre-reviews are all positive. I do use the iPhone app but this to me isn’t as big of a deal as the storage.

3) The new display to photos is a major upgrade from what they’ve been using for years. I joined Flickr in 2010 and it hadn’t changed since then. Essentially, now the photos are the stars (as they should be) rather than filling up a bunch of space with titles and descriptions you can now see the photos and click on them for all that information if you are interested. Sites like 500px and Google have been doing this for sometime of course but nice Flickr getting in the game here.

This is certainly a step in the right direction for Flickr and with the Tumblr purchase they are getting back into the social media game which is where they really struggled prior to the hiring of Marissa Mayer as CEO. She’s been very aggressive in her acquisitions and combined with the changes at Flickr I expect the Tumblr purchase to lead Yahoo! into a new and more relevant age. That makes me feel good since I’m probably the only one still using Yahoo.com as my email address so now I have some added street cred for keeping that archaic email.

Photo of the Day – Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II

Speaking of archaic – this is the first shopping mall ever built. It is in Milan, Italy and is named the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. It was built in the 1860s and the designs and architecture – like most things in Europe is very grand and ornate. The structure connects the Duomo with the La Scala Opera house by glass roofs stretching out in a cross formation. In the center of the mall is a tile depiction of a bull from a famous Italian coat of arms – legend has it that if you put your right heel on the bulls genitals and spin yourself three times you will have good luck. You can see the crowd gathered on the left hand side of this photo – each person taking their turn spinning on the bulls genitals. Of course this type of attention causes pretty severe damage to the tile and the bull needs to be replaced every two to three years.

Lastly, my heart goes out to all of those who are or know someone impacted by the tornadoes ripping across Oklahoma.