Brescia and Lake Iseo

Sunday, September 28

This morning we attended Mass in one of the two cathedrals on Brescia's Piazza del Duomo. The 11th century Rotonda, as it it known because of its unusual shape, has sunk below street level; walking down into the nave and looking up at the dark, circular walls pierced by deeply-set windows high above was an other-worldly experience. That feeling was matched by the fact that the Mass was in Latin, with Gregorian Chant, which Tom and I were both amazed that we remembered. In fact, the Latin prayers and verses were considerably more intelligible to us than the homily, which was delivered in Italian!

After Mass, we explored some of the medieval streets, which exist side-by-side with the excavated remains of the forum of the original Roman settlement and the Fascist-era Piazza della Vittoria.

This afternoon, we headed for beautiful Lake Iseo, which is ringed by mountains and cliffs. We drove around the long lake, stopping to soak up the views and for a late and leisurely lunch on the patio at a lakeside restaurant. Our enjoyment of the assortment of mixed grilled lake fish was accompanied by the pleasure of watching three generations of the family (down to a toddler) who served us in their ristorante.

Another great day in Bella Italia!

MER

Verona

Saturday, September 27

Somewhere between my e-mail and Tom's my original post about our trip to Verona vaporized, so I'll back track a day and share some pix from yesterday before doing today's trip in a separate post.

As the Arena and other ruins attest, Verona was important to the Romans, Ostrogoths, Lombards, Franks, the Holy Roman Empire, Milanese, Venetians and Austrians long before Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet went western tourists there in droves to visit Juliet's home, balcony and tomb. Talk about Fantasyland; Disney has nothing on the Bard!

Verona's historic center is lovely and its piazzas were lively as people enjoyed a street fair that flowed from one square to another with music, games, and other fun framed by picture-perfect palaces and civic buildings.

MER

Lake Como and Bellagio

Today, we drove to Como, located on the bottom of the western "leg" of Lake Como, which is shaped like an upside-down "Y". We drove north on a narrow, winding road overlooking the lake to Bellagio, located at the spot where all three sections of the "Y" come together. We had our picnic lunch on a bench along the lakeside pedestrian promenade and then spent a couple of hours wandering around this jewel of a town. We returned to Bergamo via the eastern leg of the lake, on another cliff-hugging, view-filled road.

Mel

Bergamo Pictures

I'm backtracking to post a few pictures of our home base for our week in Northern Italy. Because I'm having difficulty posting images exactly where I want them and am too tired to fuss with this any more, I'll just upload them and leave them where they land! They include a view from the city walls of Bergamo's upper city, Citta Alta, a shot of the Colleoni Chapel and Basilica of St. Mary Major in the Cathedral Square, and a view of the street from our apartment window.

MER

Off to a Good Start

Our flights went off without a hitch and we arrived in Milan today (Thursday) at 6:00 am. We took a shuttle into the city, picked up a car and headed for Bergamo, a hill town about 30 miles from Milan.

With the help of our GPS system, we found our apartment just a block from the one of the gates to the upper town (Citta Alta). Our new Italian cell phone accounts (more about that later) made it easy to connect with our landlady. We're delighted with our digs for this first leg of our stay -- a fully modernized apartment in a sixteenth century building, complete with courtyard and frescoes dated 1527!

After getting settled, we took off to spend the afternoon wandering the cobbled streets and enjoying the piazzas, churches, shops, and views of the Citta Alta. We made a foray to a market for somethings to stock our frig and then headed home to enjoy our happy hour and dinner in our temporary home.

About the phones... For any of you who might be planning a trip like this, or even a shorter stay, you might want to consider getting a SIM card in the country you're visiting. Before we left home, we had T-Mobile "unlock" our cell phones, which means that the phones will now accept other carriers' cards. In essence, our own phones now have Italian phone numbers and we can make calls here as if we were locals. This is helpful for making reservations, contacting landlords to arrange to pick up apartment keys, and even keeping track of each other! All incoming calls are free (for us, not the callers), regardless of their point of origination. We know people who buy new phones to do this, but that is totally unnecessary if you have a phone capable of international use and if your cell provider uses SIM cards. We got two pre-paid SIM cards for 8 euros and they came with 10 euros of talk time credit!! Our deal of the day, for sure.

Time to close; Tom's asleep on the couch and I'm nodding and can barely type; we'll soon be making up for all that lost sleep!

We'll post some pix soon; tonight, we just don't have it in us!

Ciao!

Mary Ellen

A New Way to Keep in Touch

On this trip to Bella Italia, we're going to try our hand at blogging to replace all those post cards that we were never very good at sending. If you bookmark this URL, you can easily check on our progress and have a peek at some of our pictures (assuming that we are, indeed, better at this than we are at snail mail!) If we're not, we'll just blame it on sketchy Internet access!