Beautiful Bergamo

So and onto another place, well for the day at least.  Now two weeks into our grand tour of Italy and we are boring ourselves with, “oh my god look”, “oh it is beautiful”, “god this is such a nice place”, “wow this place is stunning” you get the picture. So apologies because you are also going to become rather bored with my proclamations of loveliness during my time in this beautiful place called Italia.

Another such place of great beauty is a little medieval hilltop city called Bergamo. Perched high in the hillside, surrounded by vineyards, olive groves, terraces of rice, lush mountains in the distance, terracotta coloured farmhouses and the ancient city walls filled up with castles, and squares with trickling fountains, and churches towering all around. Bellisamo!

Such a pretty place, all winding streets and secret gardens, cobbled paths and hidden doorways, oh and the shops were sooo pretty!! Now where do I start the food or the fashion? They kind of went hand in hand as they were both as appealing as the other, gorgeous little boutiques with dazzling arrays of shoes and bags and fabulous clothes. Or gorgeous little boutique style eateries, deli’s and pasticceria all filled to bursting with dazzling arrays of incredible cakes, what could’ve been a thousand flavoured focaccia, a rainbow of ice-creams, fruit and vegetables from the nearby hills, freshly baked pizza, ahhh I could go on and on.

We walked and walked, round and round, up and down, through archways and through alleyways, gazed out across the amazing vistas, gazed in the amazing windows at the amazing goods on offer, lunched on amazing local produce, sampled the local cake filled with cream, nuts, chocolate and liquer in the shadow of the imposing medieval tower, and climbed to the top of the castle and stared out to the mountains beyond. Bella.

If you are stuck for ideas for weekend away with your lover, I heartily recommend a couple of nights here in this little jewel. It has an airport servicing low cost airlines and its only a short taxi drive away and the places that you could stay would be just lovely in gorgeous old buildings up in the citta alta (upper city).