Beautiful Bergamo

Our second day in Bergamo was another of the still clear days we had come to enjoy so much on this trip! In this northern part of Italy, however, such days it seems foster smog. Even smoggy, the day offered many wonderful sights and views. After being dropped off near a fountain by our courtesy shuttle and told this is where we would be picked up at 7.30pm, we had the obligatory cafe stop and set off to explore, headed for the "old" city up on the hill - where nearly all the very old and more exclusive parts of towns seem to be (historically, of course, it makes perfect sense). Here is what that looked like from below as we approached the furnicular to take the easy way up ;-) ... as you can see the "new" part of town has much wider vias than we have become used to and many pedestrian areas that felt very safe and spacious. Most of our day was spent wandering and exploring upper Bergamo.

There were, of course, the obligatory basilicas and cattedrales and chiesas abounding. Something different, though, was the positioning of the university for the study of Bergamo - we saw atleast four buildings spread around with that title and, it seemed, quite a few students milling about. Nice place to study! We also found a version of the Last Supper in a sanctuary room dedicated to Pope John XXIII (1958-65?) who was from Bergamo ... we decided that this would save us the bother in Milan of forking out for a max 15 minutes in front of the real thing - tight arse accountant I know! Anyway here is the Bergamo version and a couple of other images for you to devour.

(Far less tampered with) Bergamo
last supper fresco

Basilica S.Maria Maggiore &
Tempietto Santa (right)

Deb after visiting the pastry shop!

We also spent some time walking around the walls which offered some spectacular views in the afternoon sunshine and in a couple of these you can see the effect of the smog. Once again, travelling in autumn shows its own special charm for us sub-tropical coastal dwellers ...


Villas from Largo Colle Aperto



A view down Viale Delle Mura

Southern panorama from Viale Delle Mura

And three final shots to show off the end of a wonderful day of exploration in Bergamo ... the first captures what a wonderful time of day it was and how the right light can make a non-photographer look pretty good :-) ... being in the right place at the right time is clearly a skill they know well; for me, merely serendipitous! And we did walk back down (below right) rather than use the fernicular ... found a very nice cafe for late afternoon coffee and then a really nice fresh bowl of pasta each for dinner before our return shuttle (see later)


Looking up (more or less north)
along Viale delle Mura



Our road down - Via Sant'Allessandro
from Porta S.Giacomo



And finally, how is this for a way to remember the day we explored the old upper town of Bergamo?

Really!

You would think at our age such nonsense would be long forgotten ;-)

(it is the kids playground out of picture that must have

led to such behaviour)

P.S. I mentioned our 7.30pm pick-up by our courtesy shuttle ... well, two phone calls to the Hotel later his brother (!) turned up with another driver at 8.30pm ... the brother jumped out, issued some instructions to the driver in Italian, apologised to us for his brother being a problem and headed off into the night. But we did make it back to the Hotel safely. The Hotel staff were not impressed with the service of their contracted shuttle. John Miller did warn me!