Sunday 23 September 2012

Grand tours

Here I am on my travels again; it's just me, 3 pairs of knickers, a hair drier (priorities darlings) and an ability to fit into an Italian town using a smile and a well placed grazie. I've not got my phone charger, guidebook or marbles but I'll muddle through.

A friend of mine is doing a European Grand Tour, hopefully avoiding the worst excesses of Venice and Naples and not shipping back vast historical paintings of dubious quality so I thought I'd pop out to say hello. To encourage excesses and bad art. Obviously.

This is why I'm in Bergamo and playing bus bingo when all transport seems to be heading to Milan. An encounter with an automated ticket machine 'no notes' when your smallest change is 20 euro note was discouraging. So I eventually found a man and a ticket and hopped* on a bus saying Cittá Alta.

Corsi of width and true Italian shabby chic opened up vistas of the old town high above. Clearly the instructions of the back doc earlier in the week regarding no mountain climbing were going to go awry. First impressions are of an incredibly beautiful Venetian town with some fab clothes shops...

So we're staying in Mediaeval canary wharf and Octoberfest fever has hit Bergamo. A couple of Augustinar beers in a clay stein in a brick cellar has made me feel very autumnal. Coupled with the orange gnarled pumpkins sat on the bench opposite, the feeling of summer is evaporating.

I hope that the autumn colour continues in the botanical gardens and the water continues to sing and dance like the grasshopper blithely ignoring the match of winter.



*ascended with true grace and deportment due to back being more than unusually sore after 2 hours sat down

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