Monday September 26
Last night we stayed at the Cascina Buona Speranza Agriturismo. Unfortunately there isn’t a website to share with you. We had an apartment that slept up to 5, with 2 bedrooms, a living room, kitchenette, and the first tub in the bathroom that we’ve seen. Laundry time! Buona Speranza is a real deal working farm with horses, cows, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, and even a Portuguese pot-bellied pig. The apartment was on the third floor at one end of a 100 foot long loggia that featured couches chairs and tables throughout. The airflow was excellent, and if we weren’t so tired I can picture hanging out out there and talking all night. This would be a great place to come if you were with a big group of friends. The breakfast was wonderful, with pastries, meats, cheeses, and even plums pulled right from the tree outside. Natalina was a sweet little grandmother, and they host student groups to promote agriculture, so there were cartoon posters and toys everywhere.
From there it was pretty short ride to Bergamo. There are 2 Bergamo’s, Bergamo Bassa which is the modern town, and Bergamo Alta which is the old walled city, and the one that we visited. It is small but lovely, with a pretty little square where we had lunch. The Church of Santa Maria Maggiore was the first one that we’ve been able to get inside to take pictures and footage of. Which is good because it was chock full of things to look at. All of the really old frescoes have been covered with tapestry to protect them, but the paintings and reliefs on the upper walls and ceiling were incredible. Right next door was the tomb a Bartolomeo Colleoni, a soldier of fortune for the Venetian Republic who was born here. The interesting part of that is that his “crest” features 3 penises. Which represents the fact that he supposedly had 3 testicles. That part of the crest is rubbed shiny from all the people that touch it for good luck.
Continuing our Lake theme we rolled over to Lago d’Iseo. Monte Isola is Italy’s largest lake-island and is supposed to feature a great hike. It lasts about 3 ½ hours, we didn’t have time for that, but if I’m ever back up this way I’d like to take it. The island is big and outside of a couple small townships down by the shore looks to be almost totally uninhabited. Tonight’s agriturismo is connected to a winery and a place where they sell the wine directly to the public. Because they close at 6:30 we had to get there by then to get the keys. Which cut our day a little short, but it worked out well as it gave me time to do all this. I know this was a lot, but I had to get caught up. Hopefully there won’t be such a big gap before we update again. Tomorrow I’ll tell you all about Ricci Curbastro.