Day 7: Scorpions, pink risotto, and other surprises

Well today was one for the books.  Managed to get the family up, bathed, packed and fed in time to head out of Florence by 10am.   On our way out of the hotel room, an “adorable” little scorpion scurried out from behind the refrigerator.  It was no more than an inch or so long but it was still a FRICKIN SCORPION! It was definitely time to say Arreviderchi Firenze! 

We headed north on the autostrade toward Milan and took a slight detour north of Bologna to the lovely little town of Marenello – home to the Ferrari museum.  We spent an hour (and at least 2 GB of photos) wandering through a very nicely laid out tribute to the legendary automobile.  Frank was thrilled by pretty much everything in the museum, except the prices in the gift shop, but my favorite part was the “Ferrari in the movies” exhibit where they had a continuous reel of snippets of every scene in every movie that contained a shot of a Ferrari – including Ferris Bueller and Cars!  Very fun!

Once Frank had his fill – and filled the memory card on his camera! – we were off to grab some lunch.  We found a swanky little bistro place that looked like I could find something on the menu.  I mentioned the magic words of “senze glutine” when asking about the “riso with ham and red chicory” and the waiter looked seriously at me for a minute and then said “si” and took everyone else’s order.  It was clear that we were no longer in a major tourist area as we were the only one’s in the place speaking English and were apparently assigned the only waiter in the place that spoke English.  He was great though – checking back in with me after a few minutes to let me know that it would take an extra ten minutes for my meal as they were taking care to make sure it was “senza glutine”.  Then we all got appetizers – I got a plate of prosciutto and everyone else got a slice of an egg and cheese quiche thing with some salad and pickled tomatoes.  I’m assuming that this is what the 2 euro per person “cover charge” was for – although we’ve been in many places this trip which charged such things without any freebies.  And when my meal came, it was fabulous!  I think that the “red chicory” was raddichio and there certainly was ham in the dish but I was suprised that what I got was pink risotto!  Ere squisto!

Then came the long haul – 2.5 hours up the autostrade to Venice before heading west to Bergamo.  We pulled into town about 4:30 and tried to find the B&B I had booked.  It took some doing and when we got there, the owner launched into a detailed apology about how she didn’t have a room for us anymore because people who had booked a double showed up with four in the party and took our room for four but she has an apartment downtown that we can use and she’ll show us on her scooter and pay for our parking and can we just please wait for five minutes while she gets her helmet and she’s very sorry. (Inhale deeply now.)

So it turns our our hotel room wasn’t there and we followed her through the maze of city streets to a nondescript, but somewhat graffiti covered, building closer to the center of town.  Instead of a hotel room for four, we have a spacious efficiency apartment with a full kitchen and two double beds.  She showed Frank where to park and she’s going to deduct the 15 euros per day parking fee from our bill.  The apartment is bright and clean but not air conditioned and the whole building looks like it isn’t quite done being renovated yet.  But we’ll look at this as an adventure and see what happens from here!

Our “landlord” Elena tried to explain several details to us about where to go in town and how to work things in the apartment but we were not doing a very good job communicating.  When I turned to Duncan to find out how to say something in Italian (because I knew he had been reading up on it), she asked if he spoke more Italian than I did.  I mentioned that he actually spoke Spanish and she then launched into detailed Spanish and conversed with Duncan about all the details that she was having trouble explaining in English.  (Insert stupid monolingual American joke here… sigh.)

All our details taken care of, we headed out to explore the town.  As it was now getting late, and well past gelato time, we started walking and got our frozen treat – best gelato we’ve had in Italy yet – as we explored the “new town” which is different from the “old town” by several hundred years and several hundred feet!  The old city of Bergamo sits atop a hill and is most easily accessed by funicular – which we opted not to take tonight choosing to walk up to one of the gates instead. 

And walk up we did.  And up.  And then up some more!  Eventually we got to a place where we could enter the old city but decided to save that for tomorrow so we headed back down, (and down, and down, etc.) and finally hit our 10K steps just after 7pm.  Then off to scout for dinner.  After coming from Rome and Florence where you can’t walk 20 paces without tripping over a ristourante, this place was quite a challenge.  We saw many a caffe and pizzeria but they weren’t really good options for GF offerings. A quick check of Trip Advisor revealed that we were a few blocks away from a highly rated trattatoria specializing in sea food.  The Trattoria Camozzi da Claudio is a small place where, again, we were the only ones speaking English and had to tax our Italian (and the waiter’s English) but they were patient, understood “senza glutine” and brought us a great meal with a lovely bottle of wine for a very reasonable price.  I had tuna and grilled vegetables, Duncan the sea bass with asparagus and prawn, Gillian the monster ziti with spicy tomato sauce and olives, and Frank the Italian version of flank steak.  Again, this restaurant charged the 2 euro per person cover charge but tonight we got glasses of prosecco to have with our bruschetta, none of which appeared on our bill. 

We are now pleasantly stuffed and settling into our new accomodations.  Tomorrow we’ll explore the old town, which apparently has a fort and more churches than you can shake a stick at, and prepare for our transition  to Scotland on Friday.  The most important item on the agenda tomorrow is to find somewhere to print our boarding passes as we are flying the evil Ryan Air who already sent us an ominous email indicating that bad things would happen if we showed up at the airport without boarding passes.

Step count: 16,159 or 7 miles (most of which was up and down hills after 5pm tonight.)

Nun count: 0.  They must not like Ferraris.