Christmas Begins in Bergamo!

This is the story of how a slight oversight can cause a LOT of stress, but end up being a huge blessing:

A group of us decided to spend Christmas in the Southern France (several blog posts to come of this - and soon, i promise!). We were thrilled to find plane tickets from Milan to Marseilles for only 8 EURO!!! Yes, 8. In our excitement, we failed to notice that we would actually be flying out of Milan/Bergamo airport, a small airport in a small city about an hour away from Milan. And since it was an early morning flight, we would have to spend the night in Bergamo. More trouble was found when we discovered that because it is a small city that no one really travels too, they are pretty much devoid of hostels, our usual choice to sleep. Much scrambling ensued, but in the end we booked a Bed & Breakfast and decided to arrive mid-afternoon to wander Bergamo a bit.

Fun fact: Bergamo is actually home to Arlechino, the most well-known Commedia Dell-Arte character. We didn't really see anything involving him. I don't think most of Bergamo knows or cares too much about that. Sad.

Anyways, we really lucked out with the B&B. It was cheap, but beautiful. I took this photo standing on the landing of the 3rd floor, right outside our room's door. The patio you see is right outside the office/living room of the B&B.

Here is our door:

And here's a shot of our sweet rooms, and Taylan.

Definitely several steps up from our usual hostels...

Outside out window there was (what else?) a stream!

Also we had a kick-ass old cracked mirror.

Around sunset, we set out to explore the town. But first I needed a photo of the sunset from our landing, duh.

Here's where it really gets good. We had just spent a really intense week in Torino at Circus School, after fighting off exhaustion for the last few weeks of our first crazy-draining semester. We'd had a bit going on. And by now, it was already December 18th and I had been reeeeeallly missing the Christmas season.

LUCKILY, Bergamo must have known, because the city was covered in Christmas!

That's Taylan, Sophie, and Rowan, by the way.

We saw tons of light-lined streets, a plaza full of booths selling holiday toys/crafts/sweets, and even got to listen to some Italian carolers try to sing Christmas carols in English! They were the best actually, and we stayed and listened to them sing for about half an hour, even when they started repeating songs.

I was literally so caught up in Christmas that I didn't really take many photos. Plus I was using my ipod as a camera, which isn't great at night.

BUT, I couldn't miss getting a photo of this guy, who was sitting outside a little shop on a random side street:

The evening was capped by (drumroll please...) and ICE SKATING RINK! Sophie and I skated for a good 2 hours and were the last ones on the rink, refusing to get off before they actually closed at midnight. It was glorious. Once again, no photos. But next to the rink there was a big Christmas tree (yay!!) with some weird lights on it:

Kind of weird, but nevertheless, pretty. Thank you Bergamo, for successfully kicking off my Christmas season :)