|
|
September 23rd to 27th, Lignano, Italy
After our six week tour
of Croatia, we returned to Italy, making landfall in
Lignano. A busy schedule dictated our agenda for
the next few weeks. We needed a safe place to
leave the boat for a few days while we took a trip
inland, to Bergamo, to visit friends. We also had
marina reservations in Venice and visitors scheduled for
the first week of October. Lignano was only 35
miles from Venice so we knew we would be able to make
the trip virtually regardless of the weather.
It turned out to be a nice little spot, although not as
convenient to the train station as we would have liked.
Nonetheless, it served its purposes and we even made
some local friends who proved to be quite entertaining.
.JPG)
Arriving on Sunday, we
managed to catch a couple of hours at the marina pool
before they closed it down for the season on Monday.
.JPG)
We had planned to leave
on Monday anyway, catching a regional train for the five
hour trip to Bergamo, where we had plans to meet up with
John, Claudia and Susanna.
.JPG)
After meeting in high
school in Rome in 1982, John and I have managed to keep
in touch over the years thanks to email and many mutual
friends. I had last seen John and met Claudia for
the first time when I managed to sneak a quick trip to
Rome in at the end of a business trip to Stuttgart,
Germany five years ago.
.JPG)
They have since been
blessed with a little girl, Susanna, who is adorable and
loved playing with her two new American friends.
.JPG)
John is half American
and half Italian but has spent most of his life in Italy
and Europe. Claudia is born and raised in Bergamo.
As usual, we took full advantage of having local friends
to show us the highlights of their city.
.JPG)
Perched on the top of a
hill some 30 miles north of Milan, the old city of
Bergamo, known as the cittá alta
or high city, is full of architectural wonders. An
important pawn in the games between the city states of
Milan and Venice, the Venetians wound up with the upper
hand in the 15th century. They constructed an
enormous wall around the city, and retained possession
of the town until Napoleon wrecked havoc on northern
Europe at the end of the 18th century. The great
families of the region became generous patrons of the
arts and commissioned great palaces, churches and
artwork. Bergamo, as well as many other cities of
the area, proudly displays the benefits of this
extraordinary time in Italian history.
John took the day off
to show us around. The tour included a hike up to
the old castle perched atop the highest point
overlooking the city.
.JPG)
We also toured the
amazing cathedral and Piazza Vecchia, the social and
architectural heart of the city.
.JPG)
After all of our hard
work touring we needed to stop at John's favorite casual
lunch spot for a wonderful meal and a beer.
John and Claudia's hospitality continued with a tour of
the more modern "lower city" and a home
.JPG)
cooked meal at their
apartment that evening.
Although our visit was
far too short for my taste, we had a wonderful time
hanging out with the Dodds family and getting to know a
little about their lives and their town. The
adventure on the train, staying at a bed and breakfast,
and acting like "real" tourists was a nice change from
the boat tourism we have been doing the rest of our time
in Italy. We even managed to stop in Milan on the
way home. We took a tour of the enormous cathedral
and met up with AJ, who we had met in the Aeolians in
July, for lunch.
Back home in Lignano,
we had a long list of chores to complete before meeting
Alison and Holly in Venice. I dug out our bicycles
and peddled a few kilometers into town with the laundry
bags while Joe and the girls worked on cleaning up the
boat. By the time we broke for lunch, the
pizza restaurant was closing up for the afternoon.
As we were discussing our options with the waiter,
another customer breezed in, obviously a local and
obviously a friend. As he convinced them to serve
him a pizza that he would just take five minutes to eat,
the owner looked over to us and asked if we would like
to also sit down for lunch. We wound up sharing a
table with Rodolfo, the new police chief in Mestre, just
outside Venice. He was catching a quick bite after
closing up his family's vacation house. As it
turns out, he had just moved from Palmanova, close to
Trieste, to Mestre. After insisting on buying us
lunch, we made arrangements to meet him, his wife, who
is from Peru, and son in Venice.
Ricardo, his son was just turning seven and Rudy was sure he
would love meeting two blond haired, blue eyed American
girls!
Next Entry >>>>>>
Many thanks to our friend Craig Homenko for his assistance in setting up the website.
We also would like
to thank our buddy Scott Brunner who has been kind
enough to host the website on his server.
|
|
|
|
