We took the train to Milan after the girls were all done with school on Friday (lucky half day!). The small children were supposed to nap on the train. That didn't go as well as we'd hoped. When we arrived in Milan, Tim headed off into the city for a camera store. (To make a long story short, his main camera lens broke in Corsica; he decided that now was a good time to replace his camera entirely. He bought the camera online, but the lens was available more cheaply in Milan at a camera store. So he planned to get it there. Turns out they didn't have it in stock. He bought the other lens he was planning on getting. So the photos below are all with Tim's new camera and only a fixed focal length lens.) While Tim made a quick stop for shopping, the rest of us headed to our airbnb rental. (Second quick aside: this is our second airbnb experience, both arranged by Amy. Either she's hired as our travel agent, or airbnb is awesome. Or both.) The apartment was great. It was in the Città Studi part of Milan (in fact, to walk from the tram to the apartment, we had to walk past Amy and GP's former apartment in Milan). The apartment was a "loft" on two levels, with a bedroom, bathroom, and small galley kitchen downstairs, an open loft bedroom upstairs (with two single beds and a futon), and then a fold-out couch downstairs. It was small, but perfect for our group of eight for two nights. All checked in to the apartment, we waited on Tim for just a few minutes, then headed out to dinner at a restaurant that Amy and GP were familiar with a short walk away. Dinner was delicious. The wine flowed, too. That pretty much sums it up. We headed back to the apartment and our beds, planning for a packed day at EXPO.
The day at EXPO was packed in every possible way. We got on the commuter train to head to grounds of EXPO.
By the time we were about halfway there, the train was packed like a can of sardines. We were relieved to stumble off of it, into a flowing mass of people. We had bought our tickets online, but we had to claim free tickets for the two year olds. Obviously at a completely different location than the actual entrance to the EXPO. So we got into "line" (apparently "line" translates to "large open field full of people" in Italian) to get in to EXPO, while GP went and strong-armed the baby tickets out of the ticket office. (They actually wanted to see the babies or the documents that proved they were three or younger, but we had chosen NOT to walk the very long distance from the entry gate to the ticket counter with the small wriggly children.)
We waited for entry. It turns out there was a "stroller" entry line. We didn't bring strollers because we thought it was more convenient to have the backpack carriers for the kids. There was a line bouncer who told us that, no, the line was only for strollers and wheel chairs. (Seriously, a five year old in a stroller gets expedited entry, but a two year old on her parent's back does not?) When the bouncer turned his back on the line, we got in it anyway. No one mentioned it again. We finally got in through the gates. (My description makes it sound awful, but it honestly wasn't terrible; I'd guess we waited for about 45 minutes to get in.) We picked up some "passports" for the big kids to use to collect "stamps" as they visited different countries.
We then started our "plan." The plan was that we had a sequence of pavilions we would try. If one was too crowded, we could decide to skip it, but we wouldn't come back. The place is enormous, and we didn't want to be zig zagging all over the place. The first pavilion on our list was Pavilion Zero (why zero? I guess because we count things like floors starting from 0 here?). But before that, we wanted to get the special "if you lose your kid, we'll call you" bracelets. Except that the info desk at the front of the park was out of them (obviously). So we passed by Pavilion Zero. We didn't come back. We did see these crazy cool statues. (Look, their body parts are food!) I'm told this is by (or reminiscent of?) a famous Italian artist. Also, however, because I am a "barbarian," I'm not familiar with him.
Second stop: Children Park. (That's right, not Pavilion, and not "Children's" but Children Park.) But first, some cows:
And the route to Children Park took us by the pavilion for Belarus. We didn't go inside. But the spinning wheel in the middle of the steep grassy hill was pretty cool:
And past Thailand, too...
And some mirrors.
Anyway, Children Park was a sequence of activities for kids focused around food and energy. We waited for about five minutes before heading into the area with a group of about 20 other kids.
The first activity had some mushroom shaped domes that lowered over the kids' heads and then emitted a smell. When the domes rose again, the kids ran to a set of planters to the side with three different herbs planted in them and tried to figure out which smell matched. The kids thought it was fun.
At the next stop, the kids used some funnels to collect "rain water" that came out of some neat spouts overhead. They then contributed the rain water to a community vessel, and, when everyone was done, the water they'd just collected was sent out of a mister to water the surrounding plants.
Skip a couple, and the next one photographed was a "tree" that the kids walked around a spiral to get into (emulating the rings of the tree, but that might have been lost on them). Inside were a bunch of projectors. When the kids stood between a projector and its screen, a blob in the shape of the kid appeared on the screen, and then branches and leaves grew off of it. They thought that was fun.
Next, a ring of bikes that each powered an individual spigot of a fountain in the middle. There were regular bikes, bikes for two, trikes, and even hand-pedal bikes. Something for everyone. Very well done.
Just to prove Tim was with us...
Next up was a little pool full of plastic balls each with a metal screw on either end. The kids used a fishing pole with a magnet on it to pull out a ball. Inside was a message written by some other visitor. The kids got to keep the message (Cora called hers her "treasure" and carried it around all day) and then write their own to reinsert. In the photo below, Maya is doing the fishing while all of the other kids are getting instructions because the staff noticed that she was speaking English instead of Italian and pulled her aside to give her individual instruction.
There were a few more activities, and at the end some enormous vegetables to climb on and around.
And a maze of mirrors.
After Children Park, we wandered into the spices cluster (basically some smaller buildings with smaller countries with a smaller footprint of representation). We got some asian street food and some fruit salad and had a snack before heading over to the Azerbaijan Pavilion. We had read in advance that this pavilion was somewhat off the beaten path but very well done. We still waited probably an hour and a half in line to get in. While Amy and I waited with a sleeping Viviana, the others wandered around to the Sri Lanka Pavilion, the Benin Pavilion, the Zambia Pavilion, and the Equatorial Guinea Pavilion. They saw some dancers from Benin and collected stamps for their passports. Then back to the Azerbaijan Pavilion. I thought it was great. They had some musical instruments in the line:
And then these LED lights that were somehow activated by your hand being placed above them. It wasn't motion, but it might have been heat. It took them a little bit to come on. They were all over in different colors.
The best things about this pavilion were that (1) Maya had never heard of Azerbaijan and now she has; (2) they had these really neat and beautifully done displays giving facts about food products from Azerbaijan (that Maya was super interested in and insisted on reading every word of); and (3) they had these goggles that I can't explain well, but when you put your hand in a little box underneath the goggle and then flipped your hand over quickly, it looked like magical Azerbaijan food products would be created from your hand. There were other cool things inside the pavilion, like a really neat dynamic map of the country and this moving picture show:
Here's a picture of the UAE pavilion from the Azerbaijan Pavilion. UAE was next on our list, but the day was passing, and we wanted to try to see pavilions from different parts of the world. So, off to the Netherlands...
We passed these cool structures on the way...
And Cora fell asleep.
It turns out that the Netherlands Pavilion was just a collection of food trucks. So instead of one HUGE line, it was lots and lots of medium lines. We grabbed some Mini Crepes Hollandes, then headed for Germany. While we waited to get into Germany, the kids frolicked a bit:
Germany was VERY cool. It wasn't so much ABOUT Germany as it was about food and technology. They gave each person their own folding white card with some metallic circles around the edge. The pattern of the circles indicated the visitor's preferred language, and when you put the card on some designated platforms in the exhibit, it became your personal interactive display, showing you videos and other information about things related to food (water, soil, chemistry, etc.). They also had some screen kiosks in the middle of the exhibit where you had to interact with a demonstration on the screen to, for example, make sure that a crop received enough water. If it didn't, the crop would die, and you would lose the game. You had two ways to get water: (1) irrigation (but there was a limit) and (2) yell in a megaphone to people outside on the deck of the pavilion so they would interact with a second display to generate water (or wind, or whatever it was you needed). This was super fun. Also, kids turned into vegetables...
At the end of Germany, there was also a very well done "exit" show that lasted for about 10 minutes. We headed up to the deck for some brats and beer. Then, off of the Germany Pavilion via the cool metal slide:
Bravo, Germany.
Next door to Germany was the Kuwait Pavilion. Next door to Kuwait, the US. Maya had asked to go, so we went. There was no line to get in (suspicious already). It was kind of lame. The upstairs was too informative and un-interactive. The downstairs (a separate exhibit entirely) was a series of 7 short films basically about important aspects of American food. I thought they were kind of cool (e.g., the advent of spaghetti and meatballs and the commercialization of food, Thanksgiving, urban gardening, food trucks). Tim points out that they were hard to get if you weren't already familiar with the concepts.
At the end of the US Pavilion, though, a little taste of home:
And for Milena's grandparents...
It was getting late now. We headed back to see the "light show" at the Tree of Life. On the way, we passed a robotic bartender (technology fail):
Here's the Tree of Life. The light show was kind of disappointing. The big white pavilion on the left is the Italy Pavilion. We didn't go in...
We did find the Grom shop (gelato) and playground for our little taste of Italy.
Then we went into the Argentina Pavilion. It was a long snaky ramp up to get into it (Maya suggested that they made the ramp long to make you think there was something really cool at the end of it), but inside it was less informative and more confusing than the US Pavilion. There were some wooden animated contraptions and then some huge screens with beautiful scenes of Argentina. But that was it. On the way down, though, we did note the massive line for the other part of Argentina (food):
It was time to go (about 10pm). Here are some other scenes from our exit walk...
This cool bird/car was outside of the Czech Pavilion.
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