MILAN DUOMO CATHEDRAL
I was in Milan for a night before flying on to Catania, Sicily. My expensive hotel was partly expensive because I wanted to be a short walk away from the Duomo area of Milan. So all I saw of Milan was the large square in front of the Duomo and the Tiffany style glass topped arcade of the very elegant shops directly beside it.
But mainly what I saw of Milan was tourists as decked in almost outrageous ways as the people I had seen at the Gay Pride Festival in Asheville the day before. In the plaza in front of the Duomo it was the the Duomo with it’s many spires was a photo prop for the reason that people seemed to be there.
The Duomo was simply an elegant prop and background for selfies or photographs by friends, often from knee level, in which the person being photographed is more important than the Duomo itself.
The same was true of the very elegant arcade with ornately tiled floors. Prado, Tiffany, Chanel, Gucci were there and people were shopping but the point of being there, dressed up elegantly in the city famous for fashion, was to get your photograph taken. It was a daily festival of self and high fashion and beauty and I had a marvelous time taking photographs until a policeman, dressed in an 18th century outfit, saw me taking his photograph without his permission and demanded that I delete it or he would confiscate my one week old iPhone while at the same time I called him silly and ridiculous in his outfit. He showed me his handcuffs to prove he was real. Once he saw that his photo, shown here, had gone into my deleted photos file he lost interest and left me alone.
Asheville on Saturday was packed with tourists, Milan on Monday was packed with tourists. The tourist experience was what I was in Milan for.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 