After our day of rest yesterday we were both up early and ready to get going into town. Our campground is conveniently located about 100 yards from a tram stop that took us right to the center of town. But our destination for the day was the Citta Alta for Bergamo.
From the train station we took a bus up the hill towards the Citta Alta or high city. The high city is the old town in Bergamo and as described is built on an imposing hill overlooking the valley all the way to Milan. The lower city is mostly a product of the early 20th century.
Bergamo is also a university town as we quickly learned as the bus we were on quickly filled with millennials heading to the University on the hill. Some of the buildings we saw are quite old, but they must have other purposes in the past because the university was founded in 1968.
We did not have a plan for visiting Bergamo so when we got off the bus at the top of the hill we just wandered into the old town. We quickly found the main north-south street which dates back to the Romans and walked the length of it. Italy and France are two countries where you can gain weight just by walking by window displays, and we love just looking in the windows and drooling.
After walking the length of the town we decided to treat ourselves to a coffee. We chose Bugan Coffee lab as Ton had read about it on line. They had won an award in 2023 as the best coffee roaster in Italy and the Italians take their coffee seriously so that is an accomplishment. The coffee was delicious, and we enjoyed a fun discussion with the barista and a customer about coffee and Italy.
We spent quite a bit of time on the main square as there was quite a lot to see. The old town hall dates back to the 1400’s and the tower contains a large clock and the main bell for the city. In Europe you constantly here bells ringing but Bergamo takes the award. At 10 pm the bell on the town hall is rung 100 times. In the past it was to warn everyone that the gates to the city were closing, now it is just for fun.
We visited the church next to the cathedral as there was a mass going on in the cathedral. The church was massive and quite impressive itself. But for us what made it fun was the organist was practicing while we were looking around. In addition to looking at the art we spent the whole time trying to locate where they were playing from and never succeeded but we did enjoy the sound of the pipes.
For the first time on this trip we enjoyed a meal in a restaurant. Northern Italian food is quite different than Southern Italian. Here there are more steaks and chops and often the side dishes are polenta or potatoes. Polenta is related to grits so being a southerner originally I opted for polenta as the side for my veal while Ton went for potatoes with her Beef. We did get local stuffed pasta called casoncelli a local ravioli from Bergamo. Once again Italian cooking did not let us down and we enjoyed ourselves.
After lunch we decided to walk down the hill to the new town. The path down was steep and we were both happy with our decision to ride up the hill and then walk down.
When we got back to our aire for the night we checked the weather forecast hoping it had improved. Unfortunately it had not and we look like we are in for 3 wet days. Since we need to do some planning we extended our stay here and will spend tomorrow which is supposed to be the wettest plotting our route thru Italy for the next 25 days.