Day 13 - Milan III

Today started off pretty well because I got to sleep in for the first time this trip, and by sleep in, I mean I got about 8 hours of sleep last night. It felt great and refreshing, and I also got to lounge around for the morning, so I completely caught up on my journaling and tried to do some laundry. I was able to finally get some laundry done in a regular washer and dryer which was awesome. Then we went to the grocery store and got food for lunch. We bought a ton of food for 4 of us and we still ended up paying less for this than probably any other meal. I was stuffed for one of the first times all trip long and it was so good. We got a bunch of freshly sliced ham, some salami, cheeses, bread, chips, cookies, and cokes. It was one of the most satisfying meals I have had in quite a while. Then we met up at 3pm to go to the National Science Museum. We got there about 3:35pm and thought we had until 6:30pm before it closed, but unfortunately we got kicked out at 5pm, so we didn’t get to see everything we wanted to. They had exhibits on technology and how it has improved or how it works. There were some about televisions, radio, fiber optics, clocks, and a lot more.

Then we got to see a bunch of machines that were models of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings and ideas for different machines. 

He was extremely creative in his design for work machines and war machines. There were ideas for smashing metals, dredging, hydraulic powered devices, war boats, catapults, movable bridges, and flying machines. They were all pretty cool to see along with the ideas behind them in his notes (translated of course).

Then there were also some cool models of architectural design by da Vinci. He has some really cool ideas for different styles of design. Then there was a copy of “The Last Supper” in the museum, because the real one is in an area all by itself in a building fairly close to that one, but we were not going to get to see it. Getting to see all of this work by Leonardo da Vinci was an awesome experience and I’m glad I was at least able to get through that before we got kicked out of the museum.

Then we went to a bar, because Dr. Erdogmus promised some of the students that she would have a beer with them, so we went and had a happy hour time where if you bought a drink, you could also get some food with it. So a lot of us got a beer and some grabbed some mixed drinks. I had my first Guinness and it was actually pretty good, and I also had some fried bread stuff and cheese covered bread. We just sat around and talked for a while until we had all finished and then we headed back for the hostel. We stopped for a little while in the mall and I finally found a map of Italy that I wanted to buy. Then we went back to the hostel and hung out for the rest of the evening. It was a pretty relaxing and enjoyable day before we travel like crazy for the rest of the trip. We will be going to at least one new city each day for the rest of the trip!