2025 Italy, Day 70: Bergamo, Night 3 of 3

If you would like to see details about our journey, check out our itinerary and our bike route.

Ken still was not feeling well this morning. I walked to the grocery store to find some bland foods and apple juice, cooked him up a scrambled egg and a rice, broth, and carrot soup, and left him alone.

No, really, I made sure he was comfortable, with lots of liquids and medicines and soft foods at hand. But then, yes, I did take off with an audio tour on my phone, and explored the city for a couple hours.

Rain and bits of sunshine fought through the clouds. I put my raincoat on, took it off, put it back on... I had just ordered a slice of pizza to take back to the apartment for lunch, when the heavens opened again; I folded the paper plate around the warm slice and splashed through puddles and dodged umbrellas as I hurried home.

I found Ken dozing, feeling a bit better but still tired. He ate his rice soup while I ate my soggy pizza.

We'll spend another quiet afternoon here, and assess the situation in the morning. We have both had bouts of illness during trips before, and we usually recover. (There was that one time in Peru when I didn't recover...but I made it through the trip, got home, and, obviously, survived.) Ken seemed to recover from the flu last week, but he seems to be relapsing every few days, and we are getting a little concerned. 

The Gombito Tower was built as a defensive stronghold in the 12th century, at the point where the city's two main roads intersected. It became a commercial space in the 16th century, returned to a military role during the Austrian occupation in 1849, and was ultimately gifted to the city in 1877.

The Piazza Vecchia.

The Palazzo Nuovo.

View from the Torre del Campanone.

The Rocca.

The Rocca is surrounded by the Parco delle Rimembranze, a memorial to those lost in World Wars I and II. From the Rocca and the park, you can see all the way around the city--360 degrees.

Looking toward the Piazza Vecchia and Piazza del Duomo.

In 1561, the Republic of Venice began construction of almost 5 miles of walls to encircle Bergamo and protect the city against possible enemies. Fortunately, they were never attacked, and they remain intact and beautiful today.

The lavatoio is an antique wash house built in 1881. It was used until the 1950s and served as a point for meeting and socializing as well as washing clothes. 

2025 Italy, Day 69: Bergamo, Night 2 of 3

If you would like to see details about our journey, check out our itinerary and our bike route.

We woke up in the middle of the night to thunder and lightning and rain pounding the roof above the heavy timbers of our top-floor loft bedroom. We knew this was coming. The forecast was for thunderstorms straight through to midnight Tuesday, with heavy rain and more storms continuing for the next week or 10 days.

No problem. We settled in with coffee and books for a morning of rest. About noon, we put on the raincoats and went out to explore the main piazze nearby and find a good pizza for lunch. On the way back, we stopped at the grocery store for dinner and breakfast supplies.

It kept raining. The skylight above our bed leaked a few drips onto the floor below. We found a pan to catch the drips. We did a load of laundry.

By evening, despite a day of rest, Ken was not feeling well again. We dosed him up with Tylenol and water, ate a light dinner, and went to bed early with a Netflix movie.

The museums in Bergamo are closed on Monday. The three churches are open. This is the inside of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore.

In the early 12th century, the people of Bergamo built the basilica to honor the Virgin Mary, whom they believed had saved them from a deadly plague.

We were not the only people visiting the churches on this rainy Monday.

The basilica and the Palazzo della Ragione (shown here) are located on the Piazza del Duomo.

The Baptistry was built in 1340 inside the Santa Maria Maggiore Church. In 1661, it was disassembled and relocated. In 1898 and 1899, it was taken apart and reconstructed in a neo-Gothic style on the Piazza del Duomo, where it remains. The Baptistry is rarely open to the public, but it still serves as a baptistry for children in the congregation.

Bergamo is surrounded by almost 5 miles of old stone walls.

Modern cars barely make it through the narrow cobblestone streets. All streets are one way. Pedestrians plaster themselves up against doorways when cars go through. In general, cars are not allowed inside the walls, but there are all kinds of exceptions, and you have to be on the lookout for them.

The Piazza Vecchia is a large square ringed by restaurants.

The Cappella Colleoni is a Renaissance mausoleum, dedicated to Bartolomeo Colleoni.

2025 Italy, Day 68: Bergamo, Night 1 of 3

If you would like to see details about our journey, check out our itinerary and our bike route.

On the move again. Another beautiful day. We expected a fairly easy ride, with only 33 miles and moderate climbs. The first 10 miles were back through Iseo and around the southern edge of the lake to the west. It was Sunday, and even early in the morning, the traffic was terrible. We were relieved to leave the lake behind us and climb up through an agricultural area. For the next 20 miles or so, we rode through a constantly changing landscape, on a variety of small roads, agricultural tracks, cycle paths along rivers and canals, loops on cobblestone streets through medieval towns. Interesting.

From the map, we could see that the suburbs east of Bergamo had a large footprint, with lots of commercial areas. What we couldn't see was that the bike route passed through miles of urban blight, and many of the restaurants and shops were closed or unappealing. We pushed on through, stopping in a park at about mile 23 and eating from our snack bag.

The sun was hot, and some of the hills were challenging. Ken started to fade about mile 27. We stopped for cold drinks at a roadside cafe, and then kept going.

By the time we reached the lower city of Bergamo, it was late afternoon and hot, and we were more than ready for real food and showers. As we headed into the city, we started seeing crowds of people in bright green t-shirts. About a half mile later, we started the climb into the old upper city and had to get off our bikes and push them through crowds--I mean crowds--of green shirts.

Upper Bergamo is very small, with narrow, cobblestone streets and tall stone buildings and walls. There is only one main street through the city, and our apartment was on the farther end of it. We waded through a sea of people to the arched entranceway to our building.

Finally inside, we unloaded the bikes and began shuttling them and our bags up steep stone steps to the fourth floor.

Where we found our nice apartment. With a shower. And another steep set of stairs to our loft bedroom.

We had enough energy left to walk a few blocks to a big and busy outdoor restaurant and share plates of pasta, polenta, and roasted pork.

The crowds were still swarming when we ducked through the archway to our apartment building around 19:30. A quick Google search told us that we had arrived in Bergamo at the end of a two-day celebration called Milligrande, a noncompetitive walk covering the 1000 steps in the lower and upper towns, to encourage unity between the two municipalities.

So that is why I had trouble finding a place to stay in Bergamo after our original host canceled our reservation a couple months ago.

The first half of the route today was interesting, constantly switching from busy highways, to narrow cobblestone streets through old fortified towns, to tiny agricultural roads, to dedicated bike paths, to gravel mountain bike sections.

2025 Italy, Day 67: Pilzone, Night 3 of 3

If you would like to see details about our journey, check out our itinerary and our bike route.

Ken is feeling pretty good, but we want to give him a good rest, so we stayed close to Pilzone today. No big bike rides or kayak excursions.

It was another beautiful day, though, so we did ride our bikes a few miles north to Sulzano, and then a half mile up to the Trattoria Cacciatore Cucina del Lago d'Iseo e Valca for lunch. What a lunch. The restaurant has an unbelievable view of the lake, and it serves a limited menu with local ingredients. We had a most incredible meal.

In the evening, we went for a walk through tiny Pilzone and out around the point past the kayak rental shop and campground. On the way, we passed the bakery and picked up a few local goodies.

We are rested and ready to tackle the big jump to Bergamo tomorrow.

View of Lake Iseo from the terrace of the restaurant. 

For dinner, we ate in the kitchen / dining room of our apartment, in front of  the original fresco and huge windows that look out onto a small, overgrown garden.

On our walk before dinner, we bought cheese and pastries at the tiny bakery next to the clock tower in Pilzone.

This guy (lady?) was crawling up the stone wall outside our apartment as we left to bike to Sulzano for lunch. A European praying mantis.

2025 Italy, Day 66: Pilzone, Night 2 of 3

If you would like to see details about our journey, check out our itinerary and our bike route.

Lake Iseo is much smaller and quieter than Lake Garda, but it, too, has a busy, narrow highway shared by cars, campers, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, and pedestrians. It also has tunnels, especially on the west side of the lake. On the east side, a few miles north of Pilzone, there is a dedicated bike/pedestrian path that runs about 8 miles up to the north end of the lake.

It was another gorgeous day, and we were feeling good, so we decided to try riding our bikes around the lake, and see how far we could get without it being too dangerous or scary. We started by heading north, toward the cycle path.

The first few miles were not comfortable. A very, very narrow highway, fast traffic leaving just inches of space, lots and lots and lots of bikes. By the time we hit the dedicated cycle path, we were over riding on the highway.

The cycle path was nice, pretty, right beside the lake, not too crowded. We continued on up to Pisogne, on the northeast corner of the lake, and stopped at a cafe for cappuccini and cornetti. Not wanting to spend any more time than we had to on the highway, and definitely not wanting to pedal through the highway tunnels on the west side of the lake, we turned around and cycled back toward Pilzone, planning to stop for lunch at a nice restaurant along the way.

That restaurant was closed, as were a couple of others that we had thought looked interesting. We had a little roadside conference in Pilzone, and decided to push on for a couple more miles and check out the old town area of Iseo. There, too, the first two restaurants we tried were closed. The third was so crowded there was a line, and nowhere to park the bikes safely. We finally found an open restaurant on a side street with empty tables and a wall to lean our bikes against. We tried two typical regional dishes, both pretty heavy on the butter and cream and not that great. But we were glad to have seen Iseo.

The dedicated bike/pedestrian path on the northeast shore of Lake Iseo was beautiful and fun to ride.

On the west side of the lake, steep hills spill right into the water. There is no bike path over there. Bikes share the highway, with no shoulders and with long tunnels.

Looking toward Pisogne, in the northeast corner of the lake.

Ken on the path.

The bike path had its own tunnels. They were short and easy to navigate.

Leaving Pisogne, heading back down the east side of the lake.

2025 Italy, Day 65: Pilzone, Night 1 of 3

If you would like to see details about our journey, check out our itinerary and our bike route.

On the road, again...

It felt good to get back on the bikes. The first mile or so, we walked them up the cobblestone streets, until we passed through the city gate. The next couple miles, we gained 600 feet on stretches of small, sometimes steep roads. At about mile 3, we turned onto a short gravel stretch to connect with the cycleway to Brescia. After that, it was generally downhill for 20 miles in constantly changing scenery, from little lanes through fields and vineyards, to cobblestone streets and alleyways through tiny hamlets and villages. We were skirting the southern edges of the hills that lead to the Dolomiti, and often caught glimpses of the higher peaks in the distance.

About 10 miles in, we stopped at a bicycle cafe for cappuccini with cornetti. The cafe was fairly quiet this early on a Thursday, so we had time to make friends with the owners' Maltese mix and chat with them about life and running a small business and appreciating the beautiful weather. Such a nice couple.

Halfway through the day, we went through Brescia, a large city with big, sunny piazze and lots of outdoor restaurants, most of them not serving lunch. (We are starting to find limited services as the season winds down, especially midweek.)

Weaving our way through cobblestone streets in an old part of town, we spotted a small restaurant serving a piatto unico (one-plate meal) for 13 euros. We stopped, shared a plate of meatballs with tomato sauce, grilled zucchini and carrots, and roasted potatoes. The perfect lunch. We wanted to eat lightly so that we would be hungry for a big dinner in Pilzone to celebrate our 49th wedding anniversary.

Where did all those years go? How did we ever make it to now? We have so many, many memories--some experiences that have challenged us and made us stronger, many that have delighted us and brought us closer. Almost always, we have valued time spent together on adventures. Food for thought and reflection as the pedals went round and round, the miles melted away, and we soaked up a pretty perfect day.

About 2 miles before the end of our journey, we passed an Italmark--our new favorite supermarket. We stopped and stocked up on the basics for our three-night stay in Pilzone, a borgo (hamlet) on the lake with limited food options.

When we reached the gate to our apartment in Pilzone, our host, Stefano, met us and walked us through the property before heading to Iseo for a hospital appointment. Stefano is from Iseo but lived in London for 19 years, working in hospitality management. About five years ago, he realized that he was not happy there, had never really found his place or his people. So he moved back to Iseo and bought the building with our apartment, a 14th-century structure that might have been a monastery. It has two or three apartments. The one we are renting is his home when his wife visits from London. She is originally from Turkey and works in the fashion industry. She found her place and people in London, and doesn't really want to leave permanently. So they have a long-distance marriage.

So many interesting people we meet. So many ways we all have of living life. So many choices we make every day.

Our apartment is two stories, with big windows and views of the lake. There is even a 14th-century fresco of the maddonna and child on the wall in the kitchen. Stefano thinks this room may have been a chapel. The history is sketchy. Italy does not require historical buildings and permanent fixtures to be registered or listed, so people can choose how to renovate and what to preserve. 

Pausing on the gravel path a few miles from Salo.

As we were thanking the owners of the bike cafe and getting ready to go, they offered to take our photo. So here we are on our bikes, celebrating our 49th wedding anniversary in one of our favorite places, doing one of our favorite things, with our favorite significant other.

Here we are 49 years ago. On a different bike. We didn't own a car.

Sunset from our dinner table in Pilzone, on Lake Iseo.