Bergamo it is!

I can never guess the correct pronunication of anything here. With all the expressive, hand waving way of speech, it has to be Ber-gah-mo, right? Yeah, whatever. Chatted on the phone with Claudia, the friend-of-a-friend, who, although ill with an ear infection, insists that I come to Ber-gamo; her dad is eager to show me around the old town. So, off to the subway, off to the treni station (no need to even wake Teri up for that), and on to the 40-minute jaunt to Bergamo. You know how to say it.

I actually do have pictures I would be happy to post here, but these Internet cafes are getting so darn smart about hacking that they won't let me access files from my camera and upload them. Finally found a place that would at least burn the pics from my SD card to a CD ROM so I can clear that out for new pictures, but they did that on the main computer; mine here won't let me post from the CDROM either. Maybe the next town will be suitably backward enough to let me crack their security. Until then, my pictures will have to be links to someone else's web shots, like this one, of Bergamo...

I was met at the train station by her father (I am so bad with names), who whisked me back to their house, where Claudia and her sister (I am really so bad with names) and their dog (don't even ask me) were waiting to meet, greet, and hear all about their cousin Marianna in Canada, who I haven't seen for soooo long, and who I was unable to even get to chat with on the phone much prior to leaving home. So I had rather little to say. But being Italian, this did not stop them from pulling out the stops (i.e. wine corks), and sitting me down to a full three course meal and an episode of "Beautiful" (i.e. "the Bold and the Beautiful", translated into Italian, and I suppose no so bold). Soap operas should be used for teaching foreign languages. I can't believe that collegen-lipped cougar came back from the dead (seven years ago!) to mess up the happy home. Sure, the kids finally accepted her back, but what's that new wife going to do now?
Where was I? Oh yeah, Bergamo.
Claudia's dad then took me for a tour of Bergamo Alta, the upper, older, high-on-a-hill Bergamo. Dating back to the days that the Venetians controlled this area of Italy, the architecture is distinctly, well, Venetian, and rather impressive. Something about hill towns. San Fran in CA. Ronda in Spain. And now Bergamo in Italy.
We wound up our tour with a well-deserved beer on a patio, watching the girls go by. The women sure seem to like high heeled tall boots over here. Come to think of it, I don't mind those high heeled tall boots to much myself...
Back to the house, and grappa, and more wine, and off to bed. At ten.
Did you know that city workers start working at two in the morning here? Who'da thunkit? Well, to be fair, I was probably waking up anyway. Jet lag hasn't seemed to hit me other than waking me up at somewhere between two and four in the morning. Which is something like 6pm back home, so figure that out. No big deal, an hour of tossing and turning and I'm sleeping again.
Next morning, I'm treated to a three course breakfast before being taken to the train station for my day (and night) in Verenna, on the coast of Lake Como...