Sounds like fresha

 

Friday 8 May - happy birthday Sir David

Lovely sunny day today which saw us back on the coach headed for Brescia (which is pronounced Bresha), Lombardy's second city, comprising about 190,000 inhabitants. There's a swishy shiny glass financial district, but the old city is a beautiful mix of architctural styles reflecting its varied past - Roman remains included (it was then known as Brixia), many of which are housed in a museum which we sadly didn't have time to visit. There's also a rather splendid restoration project going on too. 

We were led on a guided walk by Alessandra, a colleague of Barbara's, and we got some fairly detailed info about the city and its origins. There's an old circular cathedral (Roman origins, with mosaics which would have been interesting to see had it been open!) right next to a "new" one with dome which was started in the 1600s but took about two centuries to complete.

It's easy to follow a walking route linking the beautiful piazzas in the city (and there's also a UNESCO corridor linking the museum to the Roman ruins which we walked through), and you're rewarded with some amazing municipal buildings, churches and some quirky oddities too. 

One of the loveliest squares is Piazza Loggia, which along with the town hall and a zodiac clock complete with life-size bronze bell ringers, commemorates a far-right terrorist bombing atrocity in 1978 which killed a dozen protesters, with a fitting memorial on the site of the device and where they fell.

We moved on to an homage to Fascist architecture in Piazza Vittorio, where Mussolini had his own red marble "pulpit" built (really rather attractive), together with a beautiful Post Office and an early skyscraper.

A couple of quirky arty things there too (don't worry, it's a rhino sculpture) and a very well-stocked Italmark supermarket full of lovely products, including Kim's favourite soap only available in Italy...

After a wander round and a bite to eat, we walked back through the old town to the bus station and were then taken to Cascina Carretto, an organic Agriturismo winery (and wedding venue) which harvests grapes by hand in August and produces Franciacorta sparkling white and rose (definitely NOT prosecco, which is made very differently) and a red - the latter was quite cheap and had rather a funky aroma. We had a tour of the vineyard and the cellar, and a very detailed explanation of how the wine is made. Obviously I can't remember all the details, but let's just say it's very painstaking in order to get the balance of acidity and sugars absolutely right. 

We had a small tasting of three of the wines - quite severely rationed (Neil - not like the Gambini brothers on Mt Etna in 2014!!), and although I really liked it, was a bit out of my price range and I wasn't about to be hauling it around northern Italy over the next 10 days. Quite a few people did buy though, as I'm the only one in the party staying on to travel further. 

We were also given a massive buffet with lots of lovely food - the meats actually come from the cows and pigs reared on the land, and we also got to see those. Like most faint-hearted meat eaters though, I would rather not have been acquainted with the poor beast providing my supper - I know, such a hypocrite.

We were back at the hotel around 7pm for more food at 8pm, this time a heap of meat which one of the waiters had spent hours barbecuing. I hadn't eaten that much at the winery but could still only manage about half of what was put in front of me (especially as I was craving vegetables), which I hope my thickening waistline was grateful for. (Shame about the half bottle of pinot nero I did manage to neck.) We also had some light entertainment in the form of singer Simone Salvi who had a wide range of backing tracks and performed requests. As he was performing right beside our table, I couldn't be too rude and kept my eye rolling to a minimum.

We settled up our rather substantial bar bill for the week and I had a relatively early night to progress my packing for the trip to Bergamo next day - the end of Kim's short break, but the beginning of my solo trip.