If there is one piece of advice I give every couple who marries here, it is this: do not leave the morning after. You will have spent a year planning a single day, and the lake deserves more of you…
italy
Bergamo – A Confession About Sweets
My photographer caught me at it again this morning, and this time he had the decency to take the picture. I was standing at the window of a pasticceria in the upper town with my nose more or less against…
Venice – One More Crossing
Venice diary, entry 5 of 5 Venice, a last morning, mid-August. The heat was already in the stones by eight, and I left the room with the shutters half-open behind me, the way you do when you mean to come…
Venice – The Most Serene
Venice diary, entry 4 of 5 I practised early again, before the light had found its way down into the canal, playing quietly by the open window until the first delivery boats began to move below and the city cleared…
Venice – The Painted Islands
Venice diary, entry 3 of 5 I practised the violin again before the city was properly awake, this time on a small wooden altana above the rooftops, one of those improbable platforms the Venetians built centuries ago so their women…
Venice – City of Lovers
Venice diary, entry 2 of 5 I practise the violin before I do anything else, wherever I happen to wake, and this morning I played at a window thrown open over a canal so narrow I could almost have passed…
Where to Stay in Bergamo
Where you sleep in Bergamo shapes the whole trip, because the city is really two towns stacked on a hill, and each offers a different kind of stay. My short answer is to sleep inside the walls of the upper…
Victoria’s Complete Guide to Bergamo
Most people meet Bergamo by accident. They fly into a low-cost airport that calls itself Milan, climb straight onto a bus toward the city an hour away, and never once turn to look at the walled town on the hill…
The Best Things to Do in Bergamo
Bergamo rewards the traveller who slows down. The upper town is small enough to cross in fifteen minutes, which fools people into thinking they have seen it, when in fact the whole pleasure is in the lingering. Here is what…
Where to Eat in Bergamo: Food and Wine
Bergamo is a UNESCO City of Gastronomy, and the local cooking is exactly what you want from a place with the Alps at its back: buttery, generous, built on cheese and polenta and slow-cooked meat. This is not delicate coastal…
How to Get to Bergamo
A tourist exiting a train in Bergamo. Getting to Bergamo is refreshingly simple, and it is one of the reasons the city makes such a good base for northern Italy. You can fly almost to its doorstep, or reach it…
The Perfect Bergamo Itinerary: One to Two Days
Bergamo is small, which makes it perfect for a short, unhurried visit. Here is how I would spend a day, and how I would stretch it to two if I had them, keeping the pace gentle and leaving room to…
