Bimbling in Bergamo

 Satruday 9 May

Back on the coach for the last time for a few sunny hours in Bergamo, or at least the old town. After stashing my luggage at the bus station (6 euros for a locker for 5 hours), orientated myself across the road at the train station, and then joined the group on the shuttle bus up the steep hill to the old town. It's a beautiful walled city - as with Brescia, the Venetians were the dominant tribe back in medieval times and their influence and architectural style is spread far and wide throughout northern Italy and beyond.

On this particular day the financial police cadets were passing out in all their finery- bottle green uniform, epaulettes, swords and all, and with senior officers in cockaded helmets. It meant the square was a bit congested. The financial police are basically concerned with - um - financial matters, like making sure people pay their taxes and retailers issue receipts, and presumably they investigate fraud, though presumably not in extremely fancy uniforms that are vaguely reminiscent of Fascist troops...no photos I'm afraid, didn't seem to be the done thing.

Kim and I separated from the group as I needed to leave early and we thought we'd make our own way round. This consisted mainly of bimbling about the shops with a little light retail therapy. We also went to the basilica which was free to visit that day, and the interior was quite breathtaking, as was the surrounding piazza.

We went to a nice restaurant and sat outside with a refreshing spritz (my first Hugo, very elderflowery), followed by a glass of bianchi and some casacelli pasta, then I picked up a caffe gelato on the way to catch the bus to the station around 2pm and we said our fond goodbyes.

The bus was rammed and seemed to stop every 30 seconds, but I collected my luggage, heaved it across the road and got on the Bergamo - Milan train in plenty of time. It's just such a shame that Italian local trains force you to heave luggage up steps not just to get on the train but to get up to a seat. The train left and arrived on time - took about 45 minutes.

I'd already worked out how to get to the Hotel Soperga - a relatively short walk from Centrale but a very sweaty one with luggage. It's clean but very no-frills and with a really hard bed, not helped by thin walls and noisy neighbours slamming doors.

I dumped bags and headed straight off for Lareto Metro about 10 minutes' walk away to go a few stops on red line M1 to Duomo, as I'd managed to get a ticket for the last entry of the day. It is impressive - maybe even more so than Sagrada Familia on the outside - and I was treated to hearing a mass being sung by the choir along with the organ (not the ancient one with thousands of pipes). The most wonderful stained glass windows are a feature of the cavernous interior, but sadly a mobile phone camera can't do them justice.

I was a bit jiggered so I went and found a shop to buy a boring salad and a soft drink to have in my room for supper - having had a good lunch it felt a bit much to have a sit-down, and it would do me no harm to stay off the sauce for one night. So I started watching Legends on Netflix, did yesterday's blog and had an early night ready for a guided walk in the morning.

Being on my own is feeling liberating, though at the same time a bit lonely. Some of the people on the tour were really nice and good fun, but there were others who I found so irritating when they wittered on - like the woman who said "awww" very loudly every time the guide said something nice, and those who just did not stop talking about the same thing over and over again (like the van not backing up on the hairpin bend so the coach was blocked, or that it was all very nice being shown how to make pasta but she always bought hers in Waitrose, and that she had been to lots of wineries and they were all the same.) And those who never listened to what the tour manager told us and then asked what time we were meeting and where. And the guy who kept referring to himself as a wurzel from Bristol and JL people as executive types. And it was a big group of 40, so even if divvied into two, every walk was an amble, and people still weren't taking in their surroundings unless pointed out by the guide. Yes, I know my tolerance threshold is low, so that's why solo travel works for me!

I think another time, I need to entertain the notion of only groups of 10 or less as we had in Turkey, on the basis that had this tour been any longer in duration, I might have accidentally punched someone...