The Great European Adventure

Da Vinci and Me

Milan, Italy, November 2012
Milan, Italy, November 2012

I’m currently working in an exhibit about Leonardo Da Vinci, and while the focus is mostly on his inventions, there’s also a large section on the Mona Lisa and an interesting video about The Last Supper. I could have seen The Last Supper in person when I was in Milan in 2012 but… I didn’t. There are a limited number of tickets to view the mural each day and you usually have to get one as part of a larger tour package and I wasn’t organized or motivated enough to make it happen. To be perfectly honest, I don’t have much interest in Renaissance art and I ended up in Milan by accident.

I was in Croatia with my friend Katie and I was meeting up with my mother in Paris the following week, but I still needed to find a way to get between the two. I looked up what cities were in between Dubrovnik and Paris and wouldn’t cost me too much money to get into or out of. I really wanted to go to Ljubljana, if only to learn how to pronounce the city’s name… and because I was a bit of a travel hipster and had made a big deal out of not wanting to go to Italy.

Anyway, the cheapest and easiest way back to Western Europe was on an overnight bus to Trieste, Italy and, from there, Milan was just a train ride away. I know what you’re thinking, “poor Emma had to visit Italy and eat delicious food and tour beautiful churches and she didn’t get to see a Da Vinci.” Well, never fear, when my mom and I met up in Paris, we visited the Louvre and I did get to see the Mona Lisa. Here I am doing my best impersonation:

Mona Lisa Smile
Mona Lisa Smile

I’ve made myself sound like such a brat in this post so I guess I’ll end with this disclaimer: I’ve really had such a lovely life and I am so thankful.

Emma Holliday is well-traveled. After 5 years in Boston, she and her husband upended their lives to move to Berlin where she is currently writing a (funny) book about travel and grief and attempting to learn German.

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