For our flight from Paris (Beauvais) to Milan (Bergamo), we had to get up unreasonably early once again, at 3 a.m, in order to get a taxi at 4:45 a.m. to the bus stop, to catch a 5 a.m. bus to Beauvais. When we arrived at the bus stop, it was crazy crowded with people heading to Beauvais Airport. These people were not pleasant and rather pushy about getting on one of three buses heading to the airport. :S
When we got to the airport, we had a bit of a wait before our flight. We grabbed coffee and a brioche (croissant) for breakfast and waited for our flight. This time, it was on time, and we were in Bergamo, on our way to our hotel at 10:30 a.m.
We had a shuttle from our hotel, the Holiday Inn Express, in Bergamo pick us up from the airport. Luckily, we were able to check into our room early and were ready to head out to see Bergamo by noon.
We caught a bus into the city centre and headed towards the Old Town section, a beautiful old village-like area on top of a hill. We took a cable car to the top and wandered around the Old Town for the afternoon.
Our views of Bergamo from the Old Town were gorgeous! We spent most of the afternoon enjoying the views.
Before heading back to the hotel, we decided to stop at a restaurant and grab a lunch/dinner combo. I had bruschetta and Ashley had a salad consisting of mozzarella, tomatoes, olives, and a wee bit of lettuce. It was pretty good.
We were pretty tired from our long day when we got back to the hotel, so we went to bed pretty early.
Day 11 (April 13)
For our second day, we took the train from Bergamo to Milan. The train ride wasn't bad--only an hour--but the train station was rather confusing. We spent nearly a half hour following signs leading to bathrooms that kept disappearing.
Once we got a map of Milan, we headed towards the metro. It was the most crowded, sardine-canned metro that we've ever been on. There was no space at all in any of the cars, though a new train came every two minutes.
Once we got to the main area of Milan, Piazza del Duomo, the disappointment began. The outside of the Duomo Cathedral was pretty cool. It had very interesting architecture. However, the inside wasn't anything spectacular, and pictures weren't allowed inside. We went through the cathedral pretty quickly before heading to the nearby shopping centre, supposedly the first mall.
It was a cool building, but it was little more than rows of overly-expensive, famous brand stores. In my opinion, that is very bleh. We'd been in Milan little over an hour, and we were already running out of things to do. Milan for the lose.
Once we grabbed lunch and did some wandering, we were ready to go back to Bergamo, which we established as the better city. Unfortunately, the automatic ticket machine lied to us and told us there was a 5:25 train when really the next train wasn't until 6:10. When we finally got on the train, it somehow ended up nearly a half hour late.
We were pretty glad to be back at our hotel. After spending a bit checking our e-mail on the computers, we decided to grab a drink at the bar. As we were sitting there, we noticed a man with a Scottish accent. It turns out he was from Kilmarnock (only 20 minutes from Glasgow) and was in Bergamo on vacation with his wife and daughter! Small world!
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