On to Bergamo

ANOTHER LINK TO THE SAME VENICE/BERGAMO PICTURES

You may recall that the original plan for the Italian trip was to fly from Liverpool to Milan. FYI, on Ryan Air, when they say “Milan”, they actually send you to the town of Bergamo. It is within an hour of Milan, so that says to me that some airline conference somewhere included a vote that somehow makes it okay for them to lie about some things. Anyway, by the time we realized that we would be flying into Bergamo, we had already booked a hotel room (non-refundable) in Milan. We found the shuttle from Bergamo to Milan, and were ready to submit to this extra travel when, as you may recall, our flight to Milan (Bergamo) was canceled. A call to the Hotel Demo in Milan confirmed that non-refundable meant exactly what it sounded like it meant.

This rehash of some of the last entry’s information is necessary to help explain why we didn’t fly out of Venice (which Ryan Air calls the airport in Treviso where they fly that is actually a 45 minute bus ride from Venice, see above apparent vote). We had decided in the post cancellation powwow in Liverpool to keep our flight from Bergamo to Liverpool instead of changing it to Venice to East Midlands because we already had bus and train tickets home from Liverpool. And all this is why on Sunday morning we left Venice and headed to the little known city of Bergamo at the foot of the Italian Alps…whew!

We had one last gelato (that a video will prove is excellent according to Savannah), and boarded the train. This got us as far as Brescia and allowed us to see some beautiful views of the Lake District and Alps, despite the fact that we were looking through snow to see it. A trundling train from Brescia dumped us out in Bergamo in the late afternoon, and we walked to our first hostel. It was fine, if you don’t mind the slamming and banging about of college students well into midnight hour.

We went out for dinner around five and realized that you can’t go to dinner in Bergamo until seven. We had a drink and snack at one place, checked some toy stores, and made our way to a promising little Italian place just off the main drag in the lower city right near where we were staying. It was fine, but not quite up to the Venice standard, though the pasta and butter seemed on par. We could see the upper part of the city from where we were, but it just seemed a little too far away to get to, and the kids were going to rebel against walking, so we went back to the hostel and fought through the noise and got some sleep.

After the most continental of breakfasts at the hotel, we had about an hour before we needed to head to the aeroporto. I found the location of the Association Montessori Internationale world headquarters training center, the existence of which was the only reason I had been previously familiarized with Bergamo itself. We hoofed it through a wet snow to go and visit for a few minutes, and were gently chastised for not calling to schedule an appointment. After this, she was nice enough to let me get a look at the classroom and say hi to the group of 16 doing their year-long training. It was interesting to see, but we had a bus to catch, so we snuck our way down the tiny sidewalks that were climbing up to the old city, and reached our stop with minutes to spare.

Another Italian travel tip: It’s hard to figure out how to pay for the bus in Bergamo. We ride A LOT of buses in England, but since the only bus fare we had paid in Italy was a clearly understandable shuttle with a window at the Treviso Airport, it was a surprise to get on in Bergamo and have the driver completely inaccessible. There was a nearby machine that people were sticking tickets into, but we didn’t have a ticket, and hadn’t been shown anywhere to purchase one. So we sat and stood on the crowded bus, and rode to the airport. Then we got off, and walked into the airport. So, if you don’t hear from me for a while, you might assume that I have been tracked down by the Transito Autorito di Italia and taken to the gulago.

Upon entering the terminal, the most obvious feature was the serpentine line stretching back from security. It was a bit terrifying to watch it grow as we stood at the Ryan Air counter, and we actually started hoping for a delay to our flight’s departure. As we took our place in the security line, it was impossible not to think about being careful what you wish for.

We got a one hour delay that lasted about two hours, and the snow continued to fall throughout this time. The flashbacks to Liverpool were haunting. Finally, we loaded buses to take us across the tarmac to the steps that put us on our last ever Ryan Air flight. Our train from Liverpool had its flux capacitator go out as we pulled into our station, so we considered ourselves lucky for a change. Then the bus was on time, but it had no heat. We were home, frozen and exhausted by eight.

Viva di Italia! Buongiorno!