Visiting Ele in Bergamo

3/2/15

Day 46 

Being here brought back a lot of memories. One of the nicest things about waking up in the summer was that I usually got up midday and the balcony off her room would be open. In America, I live nowhere near the mountains so waking up to this view and a light breeze was always a pleasant surprise. 

The plan for the day was to visit Bergamo on the way back to Milan to catch my train home. Because Ele is wayyyy too nice to me, she wouldn't let me pay for any of my train tickets, including the fast train back to Florence. On our way to Bergamo, we took one of the most ratchet trains I've seen so far in Italy.

When we got to the city, we took the funicolare (similar to the incline in Pittsburgh) up to the second half of the city- Città Alta.

(Looking up at Città Alta from Città Bassa)

(The view from the Funi)
Since this is the older section, it has the library, part of the university, and the church. We went in the library briefly but like everything else, it was being renovated and the cool parts were closed off. We moved onto Piazza Duomo to see the churches and I'm still a little confused on why there were 2, but one was a basilica and the other was a cathedral.

The Cappella Colleoni is attached to the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore and is the first thing you see after walking from Piazza Vecchia into Piazza Duomo. Then to the left is the Duomo, or the Cattredrale di Sant'Alessandro. To the right of Santa Maria Maggiore is a tiny baptistry and Ele told me her cousin was baptized there.

(Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore and Cappella Colleoni)

(Duomo di Sant'Alessandro)

(The Baptistry)

(Piazza Duomo)
We went inside the different churches and some of my friends on study abroad have started saying "Once you've seen one Catholic church, you've seen them all", but I don't think I could ever get tired of it.

(Inside Santa Maria Maggiore)

(Inside the Duomo/Cathedral- I can never get enough of these ceilings!)
In the cathedral, it surprised me when we walked up to the front and there were stairs down to go underneath the altar. Downstairs was the Cripta dei Vescovi, or Crypt of Bishops. It reminded me a little of Lady Gaga's Bad Romance video which was weird and slightly amusing. 

(Another side of one of the churches with really cool architecture)

Afterward, we wandered through Bergamo a little more and took pictures over the edge of the city walls before catching a bus back down to Città Bassa and stopping to grab lunch. 

At the train station, we found that the train I needed to take to Milan to make my train home was cancelled. This quickly turned into a disaster. Ele went to see if we could change the time of my Freccia back to Florence and luckily they could, but in the meantime, Michi missed her train home. Ordinarily, this wouldn't have been an issue, but she needed to be home in time for her friend to drive her to a class in another town and the next train home would be in an hour so she'd miss her class. Anyway, we spent the next hour waiting and talking about all the problems with Italy, especially the train system but also how hard it is to get a job, and all the illegal immigrants coming into Italy. When Ele and Michi left and my train started to move, I found I was much sadder than I expected to be leaving, but was grateful I'd gotten to see them and their carnival and their city.