It has been some time since my last post. The reason for that is that Nancy and I just returned at the end of last week from a trip to Northwest Italy. We spent the first few days on our own in Milano, then joined a tour sponsored by San Francisco’s Museo ItaloAmericano that spent the next 12 days meandering about 1,350 miles by bus through the Italian regions of Lombardia, Valle d’Aosta, Piemonte and Liguria.The Museo tour was organized and led by Alessandra Gardino Ranghiasci Montgomery (“Ale”) of Montgomery & Gardino Expeditions who also led the Museo’s tour of Siclia that Nancy and I joined a couple of years ago.
Most of our group of 18 were from the Bay Area, although we also had participants from Seattle and Houston.
Our driver for the tour was Boris Kovačič from Koper on the coast of Slovenia. Boris was a magician with the bus on the narrow roads we encountered and somehow managed to make it through the entire trip with his mirrors intact.
Below is a map which shows in red the area we covered as well as a topographical map of the same area. The numbers on the first map show the places where we stayed:
1. Milan
2. Varenna
3. Pavone Canavese
4. Torino
5. Alba
6. Genova
7. Milano Malpensa
We encountered a good deal of varied terrain - everything from Lago di Como, to the plains and rice fields of the Po valley, to the rolling hills of the Langhe wine region, to the Alps and the Ligurian coastline.
Of course, apart from the tour, the real highlight of our trip was our chance on October 8 to leave the tour for a day to fly down from Torino to Rome and from there drive up to Tivoli in the hills east of Rome where we served as the official “testimoni” (witnesses) for the marriage of our son, Alex, to Cassandre Rose Cowman at the beautiful marriage chamber at the Tivoli municipio. Following the ceremony, we strolled down to the nearby Villa d’Este for some additional photos before we said goodbye to Alex and Cass and retraced our steps to Torino.
More posts related to our trip will be following in the next few weeks.
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2 comments:
Glad to see you on here again!
Can't wait to read about the rest of your trip. Congratulations, Alex and Cassy!
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