Bergamo

All six of us left Varenna on the train, and four of us got off in Lecco.  Marco and Catherina were headed on to Venice, while Ricardo, Il Padrino, Laurie and I were picking up a car to visit a bit more of the countryside.

We said another sad farewell as we got off the train.  Marco and Catherina would continue on to Milan, and then catch another train  to Venice.

They're already dreaming of their next visit.

We got on the road in good order.  Our first stop was Bergamo.  A friend of Rick's had recommended a stop there if we were in the vicinity.  He lived in Italy for a few years, and had spent some time there.  A friend's recommendation is good enough for us!

As we drove into Bergamo, we were a bit apprehensive.  It seemed like a big, busy city, and we weren't sure what the attraction would be.

We found parking near our hotel, and had a quick lunch at an outdoor cafe.  The weather was nice and sunny.  Laurie noticed people at the next table drinking a bright orange beverage, with ice cubes, out of tall glasses.  What could it be?

We got checked into our hotel, the Best Western Hotel Cappello D'Oro, and one of the valets helped Emmett park the car.  He essentially had to back the car into a shipping-container-sized garage inside of a public parking garage.  The tiny garage had a lock on it, and we were given the key, but it wasn't too likely Emmett would want to be pulling in and out of that for little jaunts around town!

A tight squeeze for our car and Il Padrino

The old part of town was a walled city, on a hill above the newer part of town, and we got some info from the concierge at our hotel about what to see and where to eat.  We walked up the street to the funicular, which would transport us to another world, at the top of the hill.

The funicular up to the old part of Bergamo

Our first stop was the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.  It was one of the most beautiful we'd seen.  Most of the walls were covered with tapestries, and tapestries hung over the altars.

Beautiful tapestries in the Basilica

While walking through town we heard two young women speaking English.  We stopped to talk to them, and they told us they were Mormon missionaries working in Bergamo for 1-1/2 years.  They were enjoying their assignment!

We walked through the center of the old city until we came to the funicular that would take us up to the castle.   The castle hill had a commanding view of the city and surrounding area.

San Viglio castle tower

The view from the castle tower, over the old city and beyond

The castle grounds had benches so visitors could sit and enjoy the view.  On this particular day, we encountered three couples in lip-lock mode.  We tried to be as unobtrusive as we could.  I wondered how many proposals had happened in this very romantic place!

We took the funicular back down to the old city, and stopped for a fortifying beverage.  Laurie found out from our waiter that the orange drink she'd noticed earlier was called a spritz.  We ordered spritzes, and got a nice array of free snacks with the drinks.

Chips, nuts, olives, little sandwiches and pastry puffs, along with our spritzes

We had spritzes a few more times over the next several days.  When we got home and Googled the drink, we found out it was served in Northern Italy, and was appropriate at any time of the day.  It's a combination of prosecco, a sparkling white wine, and an Italian orange-flavored liqueur.  We'll be on the lookout for the orange liqueur in the states.

We did some window-shopping on our way through town.  This is Easter week (Pasqua), and there were so many great-looking pastries and candies in the shop windows.

There was another beautiful church, under renovation, on the way through town, and it looked far older than the Basilica.  It's astounding the resources that every little village devoted to building churches.

We had dinner at, Vineria Cozzi, a place that was a wine shop in the front, and a restaurant in the back.  We thought it would be fun to try some of the special wine on the shop shelves, but when we found out there was a hefty corkage fee of 8 euros, in addition to the cost of the bottle, we settled for the house wine.

We took the funicular back down the hill to the new part of town.  On the way we met a couple who were from Eastern Europe.  They were in sales of some kind, and were traveling all over Italy.  She was studying English, and really wanted to practice by talking to us.  She kept apologizing for her language skills, but I was impressed with her English, and told her so.  She was even conjugating verbs in her sentences!  When I try to communicate in Italian, I just leave the verbs out altogether!

The couple suggested we stop at Lake Garda on our way to Verona the next day.  They pulled up a map on their Ipad, and told us about the little peninsula where the town of Sirmione was located.  We'd check it out if we had time..

We were lucky to happen upon bus #1, which would take us right by our hotel, and save us a 1/2 mile or so of walking.

Back at the hotel, Rick and I got a FaceTime call on our Ipad.  It was about 10 p.m. in Italy, but only 1 p.m. in Seattle, where the kids and grandkids were calling from.  I love that we can see their faces from half-way around the world!  It's like magic.