Sunday 8^th April 2018

Cathy posting,

Up early and went for a 6.5k walk along the riverside and into the village near the sosta. It’s a pleasant enough place with lots of people cycling, running, walking, jogging and fishing, strange thing that we noticed in Italy is lots of people exercise and yet there are cigarette machines at the side of the road & near car parks, it’s an odd contrast.

 

We are surrounded on three sides by huge tall mountains making us feel like we are in the bottom of a bowl.

We had a nice chill out after lunch, did some blogging, the usual van services, water etc and set off. We had decided upon Bergamo, the research suggests it’s an amazing city with loads of history, wonderful views from the Venetian city walls from 16th Century, we fancy a bit of that.

Travelled on the SS36 road which is basically a motorway through tunnels alongside the east side of Lake Como, the tunnels were not very pleasant to drive through, every now and then there was a view but before you could say ”Bob’s your uncle” we were thrown into darkness again!

Whilst driving along it dawns upon Dave that the numbers on the speed sign i.e. 90 is the minimum speed that the Italians think they can drive at! There were some scary moments and the air was a little blue!

We’ve noticed the Italian roads are a bit rough compared to Switzerland & Germany, it’s a game of dodging the potholes, from Lecco at the Sothern end of Como it was a horrible drive to Bergamo, roundabout after roundabout every kilometre for many kilometres.

Sat Naff can’t speak French very well, she doesn’t have any German or Swiss either and she most definitely can’t speak Italian! (apologies for the lack of focus on the video)

We were going to stay at a free car park but when we got there we didn’t like the feel of it being on a corner of two busy roads, also we’d located a campsite just 4 kms outside of Bergamo centre, for €18 per night plus it has a bus and tram stop right outside the gate for Bergamo.

We arrive late just before 8pm and it’s not busy, so pick your spot.

We tried to ask questions of the lady who runs the site and we’ve had success with google translate however tiredness and not having reading glasses on again and I managed to communicate with her in Romanian, no wonder she looked confused!

Gnocchi and pesto for tea and the evening was spent researching Bergamo.

Cathy