Day 13: Milan
Welcome
Yesterday we did a small amount of sightseeing and played our first ever show in Italy.
If you look closely at the image below you may be able to spot the real breakfast foods dispersed inside this artwork.
For those of you who were unsuccessful in your hunt I had an apricot croissant and an espresso.
It was a rare treat to have a morning without any driving so after a decent sleep we left our Sandcrawler hotel and jumped onto the metro to head into Milan’s city centre.
There are many spectacular sights in Milan but two of the most breathtaking were the Castello Sforzesco, built in the 15th century, and the Duomo di Milano, the marble cathedral that took six centuries to construct.
The Castello Sforzesco.
Duomo di Milano, begun in 1386, final details completed in 1965.
One of the famous ATM 4900 series trams on it’s way down Corso Di Porta Ticinese.
We are all huge fans of Italian cuisine and it would have been a crime to leave Italy without some kind of culinary experience so we followed up on a restaurant recommendation for lunch. Sadly that experience falls outside the purview of this blog so I’ll have to hold fire here but you can read between the lines easily enough.
Later in the afternoon we loaded into Biko Club, a small venue named after Steve Biko, the South African anti-apartheid activist. The staff made us feel right at home and we enjoyed a trouble-free soundcheck followed by a freshly-cooked meal courtesy of the in-house kitchen.
A new role I have been forced to take on in recent days is that of box monitor. Sadly the quality of British cardboard is not what it used to be and combined with a few big drives with drums and other cases sloshing around loose in the boot the merch boxes have ended up slightly worse for wear. The box pictured below suffered a complete end failure at two major joints which necessitated a repair using nearly 6m of tape. This is on top of the repairs already in place on the flaps and the base.
Up the tall ladder to hang the birds. Whole team is getting involved here.
Cherym underway in their soundcheck.
Dinner with the whole crew.
Enjoying the espresso bar around the corner from Club Biko. Tristan is pictured with his 6th espresso of the day.
The rest of our evening was at worst pleasant and at best joyous. Cherym opened up the night and did their usual stellar job of breaking the ice and warming the crowd up. For us it started out being quite nerve wracking as is often the case playing in a country for the first time but the audience were so warm and welcoming that our worries were immediately laid to rest.
I’ll leave you with a faucet that I had the pleasure of experiencing when I filled my drink bottle at Club Biko. While some might say that the huge number of different water streams points to a malfunction somewhere in the device I think it provides the user with variety and choice.
