While in Moscow Circus School, I read, as part of the curriculum, oeuvres of various classics. Amongst them, The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni. The main personage, named Truffaldino, was from Bergamo. Ever since the city and personage are inseparable to me. Today I had the chance to visit the city I’ve heard about many years ago. I went in the Citta Alta, the old city, dominating the rest of Bergamo. It is a well preserved walled medieval city, very expensive to live in. I had a bit of time to slowly cycle through the narrow streets with lots of tourists. I liked what I saw.
Then I swung by lake Iseo to see the Floating Piers, a temporary work of art by Bulgarian artist Christo Yavacheff, consisting of 100,000 square meters of yellow fabric, carried by a modular floating dock system of 220,000 polyethylene cubes. The fabric creates a walkable surface over the water. It seems there were as many people as there were cubes. I am not a big fan of long lines, so I skipped the attraction.
Finally, I arrived in Brescia. There were a few nice piazzas with appealing cafes, a very old cathedral, Roman ruins. However, I already dialed up 120km and I still had another 20km to go to my resting place, in the small town of Montichiari. So it was a very quick visit.
Alberto, my host, brought me to his cousin’s flat, who is absent, and told me I could stay here for a couple of days if I wanted to. I may actually do just that – rest.
Today in numbers:
139 km – distance covered, yet another personal record
6h48m – riding time
5 – times a perfectly cyclable road abruptly became a highway with no way out
