Bergamo; Friday, 21 September, 2018

I’d arrived at the airport the previous evening on a flight back from a work trip to Madrid so had made a quick change of clothes and rechecked my bags back in, buying me an extra 20 minutes or so in bed. It was still 5am when my alarm burst into life.

I’d stayed in the BLOC hotel next to security at Gatwick and with no check-in to worry about I was able to fall out of the hotel and straight through an almost deserted security into departures in search of breakfast.

The flight was eventually called a few minutes before it was supposed to originally depart as there had been congestion on the airfield meaning it had taken longer to get the plane onto the stand than they were expecting, but after than initial hitch it was a smooth journey over to Verona and then onto the bus into town. I had plenty of time to make my train connection, and it turned out I ended up with even more as although the flight was 5 minutes late landing, the train was already 15 minutes late when I got to the station and by the time it finally turned up it was running nearly 30 minutes late.

A smooth journey across the Northern Italian countryside and clearly through a time portal somewhere as a train journey that was timetabled to take nearly 2 hours managed to arrive in Bergamo bang on time, the 30-minute delay disappearing somewhere along the way.

The hotel was a short walk from the station, but my room wasn’t ready, so instead I left my luggage with the reception desk and headed out into town.

I had a long walk up the main street through the centre of the modern lower town and up to the foot of the hills that the historic upper town sits upon, arriving at the lower funicular station just a couple of minutes before the next departure.

I caught the funicular up into the upper town and spent a long time having a wander around, taking in the main sights and eventually making my way into the main square, at about the perfect time for a late afternoon drink. After my drink pause I headed over towards the bus stop for the buses back down into town and headed back to the hotel to check-in and freshen up.

A little later I headed back out of the hotel and over to the bus stop to take the bus back up into the upper town for dinner in a very nice restaurant in the main square I’d spotted earlier. I had a very nice, and quite large dinner, so I went for a bit of a wander through the upper town at night to walk off a bit of the food, before eventually ending up at the bus stop for the bus back down the hill to my hotel and welcoming bed.