Wandering Bergamo and Area

Saturday, July 23, 2016--Bergamo

Rain had been forecast for the middle of the day today.  Fortunately, it arrived earlier.  It was raining when we went to the breakfast buffet.  We enjoyed a little bit of quite a lot of what they had to offer.  I never figured out how to use the coffee machine, though.  It is an automated coffee maker with points to press.  On two machines, I pressed "latte" and got only foamed milk.  Others were having trouble, too. Were the machines out off coffee?  Or is it necessary to go through two steps and pressing a type of coffee first and then the button for latte?  It wasn't important, but having those machines slows down the process for people getting what they want when they want it.  There were always lines for coffee.

I had some bites on my wrist and found several dead bugs.  So we talked to management about it and they moved us to another room and said they would treat the one where we were.  I wonder if someone had a pet there, although they are supposed to be only on the first floor of the hotel.

We stayed in the new room and read and listened to the news until the rain stopped at noon.  Then we headed outside finding nice, cool air!  After buying train tickets for tomorrow morning, we wandered through parts of town we had not yet seen as well as parts we especially liked yesterday.

We passed the Donazetti Teatro, the local opera house, and the monument to Donizetti next door.  Then we walked up Via Pignolo, the old road leading to the old city on the hill.  Back in Citta Alta, we sat at Piazza Vecchia to watch people.  Then we visited three religious sights that were closed when we were there yesterday--Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica which was built in hopes God would stop the Black Plague and which has extravagant baroque features and many tapestries, the Duomo (cathedral) next door, and the Chapel Colleoni which is a tomb for him, his wife, and his daughter.

From there, we headed up another level into the hills to the village of San Vigilio.  It has fantastic views from the castle ruins of the Citta Alta, the Citta Bassa, and other villages further away in the mountains.

It was early evening when we returned to our hotel where we ate some pizza we had bought nearby.  Both of us were tired from the climbs as well as from walking so much on small cobblestones.