Less lost, per say, more so ending up where I didn't intend...

Somehow, no matter how detailed my directions are, no matter how long I stare at satellite images on Google maps, I struggle to get to my intended destination. I blame this on the haphazard nature of Milanese city-planning. Remember what I said about the city being laid out like a spider-web? As you might imagine, streets tend to not go straight for very long, and also tend to change name by the block (making it very hard to try to "run into" a street).

No matter, though I don't consider myself to be a very spontaneous person, I love to explore and don't really mind ending up somewhere other than I intended. And I usually serendipitously end up exactly where I wanted to be right when I'm ready to hop back on the metro toward home. Yesterday I was trying to find Fabriano, a stationary store, of course. I wrote out careful directions, and ended up losing myself in some incredible pedestrian-only, pebble-cobblestoned shopping district that was a fusion of ooo-la-la and quirky.

After two hours of ambling about, I stopped to take a picture of yet another random church plopped unceremoniously in the middle of more shops, turned around and there, literally right behind me, was Fabriano! I think one of the most striking thing about wandering about Milan is how you can be walking through narrow, ordinary streets lined with shops and apartments, just buildings upon buildings, and then suddenly come to a small piazza with an incredible old cathedral, usually guarded by some misplaced statue (more on that later). I really don't know how to convey this experience, it's like wandering through a dense forest and coming upon a clearing that has somehow managed to maintain its stillness as everything else filled into every possible space around it. These little piazzas seem commonplace to the Milanese people who seem to breeze right by the neighborhood cathedral without the slightest indication of anything other than vague disinterest. I, however, am constantly taken aback by the breaks in the ordinary line of buildings, and often pause to whip out my little camera. No captions for these pictures, I don't really feel qualified as I really don't know where I was, what they are, or anything about them other than they caught my eye.