Hung out with my friend Rian today in snooty-ass overpriced stores where the anorexic, boob-jobbed, collagen-dripping saleshussies wouldn't even make eye contact with us, except to tell us non puoi permettere le foto. Which, I don't get. First, the store went through the trouble of putting up these displays, so they want to show them off. Second, it has to have occurred to the people up in Corporate that not every one of their potential customers is standing right in front of the display at this very moment, and they'll do more business if they get positive word-of-mouth. And third, I'm pretty sure the customer is supposed to be always right.

Maybe it's because I'm coming from New York, where the haute couture stores double as tourist attractions and the salescrews have figured out that they can't judge the wealth of a visitor carrying a digital camera by their dirty Hawaiian t-shirt and fanny pack. I've got money, and I could easily drop six-hundred euros on a pair of Bruno Maglis or an Armani jacket, but if the salespeople aren't going to be mildly solicitous and cater to my every reasonable whim, screw that.

Anyway, today's agenda was the Duomo (cathedral) in Milan, the Galleria (shopping arcade), the aforementioned stores, and the Brera district, which is sort of like their Greenwich Village. I hear the Duomo is better when the sun is illuminating the stained glass windows and you can go up on the roof, but it's still pretty damn impressive. The rest of the day was pretty pedestrian, although I do enjoy being all alone in these churches dating back to the early Byzantine era. They're wonderful solaces from the vacation stress, language stress, and pretty much all the other stress in the world.

Here are some pictures.

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The Duomo. It's huge.

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The pictures don't do justice to the scale of the cathedral or its perpetual duskiness.

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I think this the Chiesa di San Simpliciano. I also visited two other churches, but the pictures didn't really come out.

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The Galleria at night. This is the picture the Milan tourist board puts on all of their postcards.