Shoremen Tour Italy and Ireland
A Journal by Kyle Stem '06

DAY TWO - Monday, August 16th

Today we traveled to Milan for a guided tour of the city. Milan is said to be the center of fashion, business, and finance. So as you can imagine, it was a very wealthy area. As everything was very new to us all, we took in a lot of amazing sites and witnessed numerous remarkable buildings. However, two buildings in Milan stood out as the most fascinating to me...Castello Sforzesco and the Cathedral Duomo.

Castel Sforzesco was our first stop in Milan and immediately we knew we were in for an excellent day. The castle was massive! The front two walls extended 200 meters to both sides of the entrance, which itself stood hundreds and hundreds of feet tall. Inside the castle were three large courtyards, each very, very large. In front of the castle was a very large water fountain, shaped almost like a wedding cake. The castle was a very interesting and historic site for us all to take in.

The Cathedral Duomo was equally as amazing as the castle. It is one of the largest Gothic style churches in the world, taking over 500 years to build. The roof of the church contained hundreds of spires, and numerous statues of gargoyles. Inside the church, the aisles were divided by 52 very large pillars, and was lit by a remarkable display of stained glass windows. Witnessing this cathedral with our own eyes was much more justifying to the cathedrals excellence than I could ever put into words.

After our day in Milan we traveled back to Como to play our first game. We played Lombardy Select. We lost the game as we were a tad bit rusty, but we tried not to let it bother us too much as we were still very excited and giddy to be in Italy. The game, in fact, nearly didn't happen because during pre-game warm-ups Travis tried to dunk and he bent the rim. The staff from the gym wasn't as happy as they had to take the rim down and bend it back to shape. After about 20 minutes, they had the rim ready to go again.

Castel Sforzesco

In front of Castel Sforzesco

Castel Sforzesco

Cathedral Duomo

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