It's also weird to look down on the stations from the upper-level windows!
This first train was a TSR, the Trenord-exclusive second generation of the TAF from the day before. Just like that one, this train had no working audio-visual announcements, so it's a good thing I was going to the end of the line!
But Piotello Limito wasn't where I was headed -- I was just connecting onto this Vivalto set (which I'm not a big fan of, but did mean that I got to ride every type of double-decker train currently in service in Italy on this trip; the previous TSR ride also meant that over the course of my vacations to Italy, I have now ridden on every type of double-decker train ever in service in Italy) to Bergamo. I didn't get to ride upstairs this time, though, since the train was extremely busy!
And here's Bergamo, with a McDonald's to greet you as soon as you get out of the station, of course.
My plan for Bergamo was simple: Take the funicular to the upper city (the old part of the city), then walk through town and take the other funicular that leads further up the hill, then walk or take the bus back to the train station. That fell apart fast when I got to the funicular station and realized there was an absurd line that would probably take nearly an hour to get through. I hung around for a little bit at first, hoping the line would die down (I was hoping it was just everyone from my train lining up at once, since there's a lot of construction going on at the train station that's limiting how many trains they can run here, but it was only getting longer, so I decided to bail and walk up the hill instead. It was a nice weekend day, but I wasn't expecting this in February! I like funiculars, but it was starting to seem like they don't like me!
At least there are some pretty great views from the walk up.
And at least things are a bit less crazy at the top station. Maybe I'll be able to ride the funicular after all, just in the downhill direction.
Heading into town, I decided to climb the bell tower next to the cathedral. It's a bit of a family tradition. The elevator was broken, but that's fine since I would have climbed the stairs anyway -- at least going up. It would have been nice to take the elevator down, since the stairs are pretty steep and mostly don't have handrails!
Here is the cathedral, by the way. It's nothing particularly out-of-the-ordinary by Italian standards, but it does look pretty cool from above!
Looking at where I'm about to go (foreground), and where I was a few days back (Tirano is somewhere behind those mountains).
I'm glad I came here on such a sunny and clear day with views for a considerable distance in every direction (as always, the views were even better in person than in these pictures).
The exit from the tower takes you through a little museum, consisting of an archeological site right at the bottom of the tower itself and a big interactive electronic museum (which I didn't really understand, mostly because it was all in Italian).
Finally, a funicular I can actually ride, the San Vigilio Funicular that continues further up from the far side of Bergamo. This was still pretty busy, but not line-out-the-door busy. Interestingly, this isn't a traditional funicular, in that it only has one car rather than two counterbalanced cars with a passing loop in the middle.
This funicular is from 1912, but only the upper station still has its original style -- the train car and lower station are quite bland. The lower funicular is a bit more interesting.
But the views from up here are quite nice, looking back down on the upper city. The tower I climbed is right in the middle, the mostly square one with a large opening for bells towards the top.
Climbing further up, there's a very ruined castle at the top of the hill.
This isn't the last time we'll be looking at the insides of castle fortifications in this post...
And as you would expect, a hilltop castle provides amazing views all around.
So it's time to head down the upper funicular, then walk through the city...
Then get back to the lower funicular, finally. I always find California Bakery, a chain in northern Italy, amusing -- I'm in Italy, so I don't want "the deserts of America", I want Italian deserts!
The funicular was already in the station when I got there, so I thought we would be leaving quite soon, but no -- it took quite a while for the driver to show up and let us board, and then even longer before they actually left. With the crazy lines at the bottom of the hill, you'd think they would want to turn around as quickly as possible, but I guess not. It's interesting to see that this funicular has an overhead power line -- you don't normally see that since the vehicles aren't self-propelled, instead being pulled by the cable (that's pretty much the definition of a funicular). I guess it must just be for the lights and doors and such on the car.
And yes, the line to go up the hill was still crazy at 3 in the afternoon.
I then took the bus back to the train station, but I had 45 minutes until the next train I wanted to catch. So, since I am on a quest to ride all of Italy's urban rail systems, I had to hop on the tram that runs from the station out into the eastern suburbs of Bergamo. These trams are basically the same as Milan's Sirio fleet, apart from being designed for two-way operation (rather than needing turnaround loops like Milan's old-fashioned system uses). I didn't do much here, just riding the train a few stops and then heading right back, but that still counts as another system checked off my list!
When I got back to the station, I thought I still had a lot of time, so I wandered around the Carrefour Express store looking for snacks (I didn't end up buying anything) and trying to figure out what was happening with all of the construction. Then I realized I had no idea where my train was actually leaving from: it was listed either as platform 3 or platform 1 east, but I could only find platforms 1 and 2 west (which is where I came in from Milan). None of the signs inside the station said anything about any other platforms. Eventually, and only because I spotted a crowd walking in an unusual direction, I realized that you have to:
- Go outside the station building
- Walk through the pay parking lot
- Go past all the freight buildings
- Go through the back of the bus depot
- Walk up a long ramp
All in all, it's about a third of a mile or half a kilometer, or nearly a 10 minute walk for someone who's already confused and not sure they're going the right way (it should be more like a 5 minute walk at my normal pace, but that didn't happen).
Good news: I made the train. Bad news: I missed the stupid 5/10-minute advance window for buying tickets on the app, and of course there isn't a ticket machine on this remote platform. So I had to improvise again and buy a ticket for a slightly different trip that happened to cost the same amount (I think this time I just told the app I was boarding a few stops further down the line), and it didn't matter in the end anyway since no one ever came around to check my ticket. I was excited to see that the train was one of the brand-new Pop trains, which I quite liked in Sicily and which I had been hoping to get on the Milan-Tirano route. They do have a somewhat absurd number of overhead information screens, especially considering that a large portion of Trenord's fleet has no (working) screens.
On the way in to Brescia, I spotted one of the goofy D.752 "goggles" locomotives sitting in the freight yard. These things are so silly looking!
The main reason I wanted to go to Brescia was to check off another metro system. But I did want to get to a specific place by a specific time, so I was in a bit of a rush. Brescia's metro does stop at the train station, but it isn't super well integrated -- if you go out the main entrance, you then have to walk outside for a few blocks to get to the metro station; there is a direct connection through a second underpass that connects to most of the train platforms, but it's very poorly signed and even though I knew it was there on the way back, I still missed it and went up the wrong escalators. So it's better than Catania (where you have to go quite a ways to get to the metro from the train station), but not great.
The trains are the same Breda automated trains used on seemingly all new metro lines in Italy, including Line C in Rome and Lines 4 and 5 in Milan. Surprisingly, the metro was packed! The non-functional generic Acer computer monitors are a nice touch -- I wonder what they were supposed to show (the trains have built-in next stop displays).
It seemed like pretty much everyone from the metro got off at the same stop as me, and I soon found out why: apparently there was some sort of street festival going on.
But I had a goal: To get up to that castle to watch the sunset. And as you can see from the light, I didn't have much time left.
And I didn't want to go the direct route either -- I wanted to take the Strada del Soccorso (which seems to roughly translate to "escape route") which winds its way up the back of the castle, since it's closed after dark.
I may not be at the top of the castle yet, but this is still a pretty amazing view of the sunset.
I told you there was more wandering around inside castle walls coming!
Now I'm about halfway up, and the sunset is still amazing, as are the views in all directions. I didn't realize Brescia was a big enough city to actually have a skyline, with a decent number of modern towers! This spot might have actually had the best views of anywhere in the castle, but I wanted to keep climbing.
Now we're finally getting into the actual fortified portion of the castle itself.
When I was planning this trip, I had considered climbing this hill to get a view of the sunset with the castle in the foreground. But it didn't seem all that promising checking Street View, and by the time I got to Brescia, I simply didn't have the time. I would have wanted to get here at least an hour earlier if I was going to try that, maybe more like two hours to be sure I would be able to make it back to the castle if the hill plan flopped.
And now I finally made it to the actual top. The top of that tower must have an amazing view, but the buildings up here are still being used for some sort of government purpose, and all of the antennas at the top of the tower probably mean that it's never open to the public.
The sun's just about to drop below the horizon, but it's not there yet, and I have an idea -- time to hurry, again.
And I timed it just right, getting back to the castle door just in time to catch the last bit of the sun disappearing through the opening. It took quite a bit to get this picture to work out, since my phone's auto exposure didn't like it at all, completely blowing out the sunset colors; it's never fun learning how to fiddle with these things manually while facing a time crunch, but I managed, and this picture is now hanging on my wall where I can look at it while I'm writing this. (Walgreens loves to give out free photo prints!)
With the sunset done, it's time to head back into the castle and see what I can see before it closes for the night. Spoiler: Not much, since it was a lot darker than this picture indicates, and I (along with the few other people who had the same sunset idea as me) kept getting shooed out of areas that the employees were trying to close a few minutes early.
This panorama was about all I got before being chased out.
I always love seeing contrails at sunset, and this view with one directly over the city is pretty great. I'm sure sunrises are nice too, but I'm hardly ever awake for them!
The illumination on the castle looks quite nice too.
The light was fading fast, but I was still having a great time and wasn't ready to head back to Milan just yet. Luckily, this lower part of the castle doesn't seem to close overnight.
All of the tunnels and passageways get a bit creepy as it gets dark out.
But there's still a little bit of sunset left to look at. The panorama, since it's not a long-exposure/"night mode" picture, does a better job of capturing how dark it really was.
Sadly, it really was time to head back to Milan, and there was a train I really wanted to catch in about half an hour. The castle does look really cool lit up at night like this.
Whatever this festival was, the party was still going on! But I was worried that I wouldn't have enough time to walk through it, so back to the Metro it was.
San Faustino Station, by the castle, has this cool and/or creepy art piece fading between different colors of neon making up overlapping faces.
On the way back, I decided to treat myself to a high-speed train that went directly from Brescia to Porta Garibaldi. I could have taken the Regionale, but I would have had to leave the castle nearly an hour earlier (basically right after sunset) and gotten to Milan around the same time, and I was just having too much fun at the castle. This train cost 27 euros, or nearly 3 and a half times the 8 euro fare for the Regionale, making it rather pricey, though it does take about half as much time. I was hoping to get on one of the funny ex-Dutch trains I talked about towards the start of this series, but instead ended up on an ETR.600, which is, at least, a type I haven't been on before.
And that's it for another day. This was definitely one of my favorite days of the entire trip, right up there with the two days on the Rhaetian Railway network, and I'd absolutely recommend all of it.
Huh, I don't know if you told me that you were going to Bergamo and it has just slipped my mind, but I didn't know you were making a stop there! Bergamo, Sotto il Monte specifically, is where my friend lived and so that's where I stayed for a little while many years ago. I ate at Italian restaurants, authentic ones and not tourist-serving ones, and even went bowling in Bergamo. I actually bowled my best game ever there, which was a bit surprising because the rental shoes weren't good at all and I was slipping and sliding all over the place, lol.
ReplyDeleteThis was before the second Iraq War and all of that, but even then, I encountered some anti-American sentiment from some of my friends' friends in Bergamo. It was a bit strange. A couple of the friends were visibly concerned to even be near me and the mother of someone in that group, whom I was warned harbored strong anti-American sentiments, was giving me a strong dose of stink eye. It is kind of funny because aside from that, I never encountered any real anti-American sentiment that I could detect, but, anyway, lol. Some of these people were bowling with us and I did feel the need to bowl well to make the US look good I suppose. It probably helped that the bowling snack bar was called the 'Cafe America' or something like that and had a giant American flag painted above it, lol.
Bergamo and neighboring Cremona are very important music towns, the latter being where the most famous (and expensive) violins, violas, and cellos were made. I'm not sure if you picked up on that while you visited. If I had known you were going there, I would have sent you a good Bergamasca to listen to! I suppose it isn't too late, here's the Bergamasca from Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances. It may not be the kind of music you like, but when in Rome, or in Bergamo in this case, do as the Romans do, lol: https://youtu.be/zEVB26kz6fY
I know we talked about Bergamo at some point, but I don't remember if that was before or after I planned this trip. It's a nice place, but it's very touristy these days -- and if it was this busy in February, I can't imagine what it is like at busy times of the year! I imagine the anti-tourist sentiment is a lot less than it used to be as a result, though anti-American sentiment is surely going to be on the rise again. Thankfully I didn't run into any of that on this trip, though it seems I blend in pretty well based on how many people try to ask me directions in Italian! Of course, it always becomes super obvious as soon as I try to talk to them...
DeleteI found a less-touristy restaurant in Milan that was really good, and ate there 4 of the 6 nights I was there. It was a bit intimidating at first since only one of the employees spoke much English, but it was worth it!