Posts Tagged With: Bergamo

The Smallest 5 for the Big 5-O

Posted on July 31, 2017 by WolfeStreetTravel

One of us turns 50 this year. In recognition of the milestone, we’re hitting all 5 of Europe’s “microstates” in a single road trip.

What prompted a birthday trip through Europe’s microstates? An inexplicable fixation with them since our first trip to Europe in 2002, which included a leg by train from Barcelona, Spain, to Avignon, France. When we planned the trip and looked at the train route, we noticed something to the west on the map – a country we didn’t know existed was positioned between France and Spain.

A entire freakin’ country – Andorra – lurking between France and Spain.

One of us (the one with the birthday, to be clear) has been fascinated ever since, and even tried to add a side trip to Andorra to our bike trip in Catalonia in 2009. (This was overruled in favor of Cadaques, which, we think you’ll agree, was a pretty good idea when you check out that post.)

Nonetheless, the impetus to visit the microstates persisted, and the 50th birthday milestone provided a great opportunity to finally see them.

There are some tiny regions in Europe and elsewhere, but not all can be considered microstates. For example, Gibraltar, at the southwest tip of Spain, is tiny, but it’s not independent – it’s a British Overseas Territory. Luxembourg, on the other hand, is independent, but not tiny (it covers 1000 square miles). By contrast, the microstates are truly micro – most cover less than 25 square miles and none of them exceed an area of 200 square miles.

So, other than being incredibly small, what defines a microstate?

  • Independence
  • Diplomatic recognition
  • Control of territory
  • Permanent population
  • Government

Based on these characteristics, the following sovereign countries within continental Europe qualify and will be part of the trip:

  1. The Principality of Andorra (finally!)
  2. The Principality of Liechtenstein
  3. The Principality of Monaco
  4. The Most Serene Republic of San Marino
  5. The State of Vatican City

Because none of the microstates, other than Vatican City, have rail stations (particularly Andorra and Liechtenstein – Nice and Rimini are somewhat close to Monaco and San Marino), we had to forego train travel, which otherwise is the best way to get around Europe. Instead, we’re renting a car and making this a road trip.

In our planning, we had a choice:

  1. Drive directly from one microstate to another, resulting in a couple of long days of driving, but providing a couple of rest days with no driving, or
  2. Add interim destinations between some of the microstates, so that we’re never driving more than 3 or 4 hours, but we would be driving every day

We chose Option 2:

The map above depicts the following itinerary:

  • Take a redeye to Rome
  • Day 1: Vatican City
  • Day 2: Drive to San Marino
  • Day 3: Drive to Bergamo, Italy
  • Day 4: Drive to Liechtenstein
  • Day 5: Drive to Lake Lugano, Switzerland
  • Day 6: Drive to Monaco
  • Day 7: Drive to Carcassonne, France (another place we’ve wanted to visit – last stronghold of the Cathars!)
  • Day 8: Drive to Andorra
  • Day 9: Drive to Barcelona
  • Day 10: Fly back

We’ll spend every afternoon and night in the destination town / country to check things out before heading off the next morning to the next target.

Today, we’re part of the way through the tip, in Vaduz, Liechtenstein. We’ll post highlights of the trip when we get back!

Categories: Andorra, France, Italy, Liechtenstein, Micronations!, Monaco, Road Trips, San Marino, Spain, Switzerland, Vatican City | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

European Microstate Road Trip: Overview

Posted on July 31, 2017 by WolfeStreetTravel

Our epic 9-country road trip designed to hit all 5 European microstates came to an end on Sunday. Despite some initial trepidation, it turned out to be fantastic!

This was one of our best trips, in fact, despite encountering this choice little nugget on 2 of the tiny 5 from a Cadogan guide book that we used several years ago on a previous trip:

“It’s a sleazy little paradise, [Microstate X]. . . Today, the [inhabitants] have found a way to exploit every single possibility open to a grasping, sweaty-palmed pipsqueak principality. They’ve turned their lovely corner of the [region] into a single, garish supermarket. It’s a worthy competitor for Europe’s other Ruritanian craphole, [Microstate Y], which, if you’ve never been, is the first country in the world to be entirely paved over with factory outlet car parks.”

Yow! We’ll reveal which of the pipsqueak nations the Cadogan guide was referencing in subsequent posts, but we were infatuated with the tiny countries and undeterred! We persisted and planned and executed a pretty ambitious itinerary to hit all 5 microstates in a single trip.

Information on continental Europe’s 5 tiniest nations – and the characteristics that define a microstate – was previously posted here. A repost of the map with the location of each is below:

Location of the continental Europe’s five microstates

The trip was great adventure, overall – both based on the tiny countries and some of the outstanding start, stop, or stopover locations in Italy, Switzerland, France, and Spain that we included in the trip to keep driving distances practical. Our experiences in the five microstates spanned the spectrum:

  • Two exceeded our fairly modest expectations (biased in part by the pithy and brutal opinion proffered by the Cadogan guide) and we really enjoyed our visit to both
  • One was precisely as expected
  • Two were definitely not as awesome as we thought they would be – one was simply not as magnificent as we had envisioned, while the other turned out to be every bit just an outrageously expensive Disney world

These reactions will be assigned to the appropriate country in future posts, but some highlights of the tiny five are below, presented in the order in which we encountered the little buggers.

No. 1 of 5: The State of Vatican City:

Hallway of maps in the Vatican Museum

At the border between Vatican City and Rome – No. 1 complete

No. 2 of 5 – The Most Serene Republic of San Marino:

Guaita (1st Castle) on San Marino’s Mount Titano

San Marino’s town hall at sunset

View from Cesta (2nd Castle) to Guaita (1st Castle) on Mount Titano in San Marino – Microstate No. 2 complete

No. 3 of 5 and location for the Big 5-0 milestone – the Principality of Liechtenstein:

Vaduz castle from afar

and up close – No. 3 complete

4 of 5 – Principality of Monaco:

Monte Carlo casino our evening in Monaco

Above the port of Monte Carlo – No. 4 complete

And finally, No. 5 of 5 and the microstate that started it all – the Principality of Andorra:

11th-century Sant Joan de Caselles church with Lombard-style tower in Andorra

Casa de la Vall in Andorra la Vella – headquarters of the General Council of Andorra; No. 5 of 5 complete!

Before we left the US, we were a little concerned that the trip could turn out to be an arduous box-checking exercise involving too much driving and not enough time to enjoy each destination, based on the itinerary we designed:

  • Take a redeye to Rome
  • Day 1: Vatican City (1 of 5 . . .)
  • Day 2: Drive to San Marino (2 of 5 . . .)
  • Day 3: Drive to Bergamo, Italy
  • Day 4: Drive to Liechtenstein (3 of 5 . . .)
  • Day 5: Drive to Lake Lugano, Switzerland
  • Day 6: Drive to Monaco (4 of 5 . . .)
  • Day 7: Drive to Carcassonne, France
  • Day 8: Drive to Andorra (5 of 5!)
  • Day 9: Drive to Barcelona
  • Day 10: Fly back

Instead, our daily cadence ended up providing a good balance – we’d drive for a few hours each morning in our rockin’ diesel Skoda family truckster . . .

Our trusty Skoda after navigating the narrow alleyways of Bergamo on Day 3

. . . then arrive at our destination in the early afternoon to explore things, typically log some downtime in the evening at the hotel pool, then grab dinner.

Sweet pool in Carcassonne, our stopover between Monaco and Andorra

Although the trip focused on the microstates, some of the stopovers proved to be just as rewarding, including staying in a hotel that overlooked Lake Lugano in Switzerland on August 1, without realizing beforehand that this was the Swiss National Holiday – spectacular!

Fireworks over Lake Lugano to celebrate the Swiss National Holiday

We’ll post highlights of each of the five micronations plus the very cool stopover locations during the next few weeks.

Oh, and the book read as we started the trip?

Of course.

Categories: Andorra, France, Italy, Liechtenstein, Micronations!, Monaco, Road Trips, San Marino, Spain, Switzerland, Vatican City | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Bergamo, Italy

Posted on July 31, 2017 by WolfeStreetTravel

After San Marino, the next target on our micronation road trip was the country of Leichtenstein. However, driving there directly would take almost 8 hours, so we picked an appealing half way point to stop over on the way – Bergamo, Italy:

Driving through the more modern outskirts of town toward the fortified Città Alta (Upper Town), where we’d spend our time:

Bergamo’s main square – Piazza Vecchia, located precisely where the old Roman forum once existed.

The piazza’s 1780 Contarini fountain, where you can still refill your water bottles with potable water flowing from the sphynx’s mouths:

On one side of the piazza lies the Venetion-styled Palazzo Nuovo (New Palace), which served as Bergamo’s Town Hall until 1873:

On the other lies the Palazzo della Ragione, the oldest municipal seat in Lombardy, with the Venetion lion still over the door from when Bergamo was part of the independent Venetion empire:

Just beyond is the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, built starting in 1137 in fulfillment of a promise by the townspeople to dedicate a church to Mary if she helped them avoid the plague in the early years of the 1100s:

Down the street lies the Torre Dell’Orologio (Clock Tower) that serves as the gateway into town through the town’s citadel, dating to 1355:

A climb up from town in the opposite direction brought us to Rocca of Bergamo (the Fortress of Bergamo):

On one side of the fortress are great views of the medieval skyline of Bergamo’s Città Alta:

On the other are views to the valley below, as captured by this mighty cool panorama:

The grounds of the fortress now serves as a site for Italian war memorials:

We’re not sure which elements of this image is more incongruous: a little girl and an Italian tank . . . or simply an Italian tank:

Our cool design hotel, abutting the Gombito Tower, built in 1200 as a symbol of power of one of the feuding families in town (a la San Gimignano, experienced during our bike trip through Tuscany). It once controlled access to Piazza Vecchia from the roads leading into Città Alta from the valleys below:

Right next to the hotel (near a nice location for an afternoon cigar) lies Bergamo’s last Lavatoio Medievale, a communal wash house built in 1881 to combat sanitation problems that led to a cholera epidemic in the late 1800s. It’s a pretty cool structure with a decorative cast iron roof, and continues to serve as a communal gathering location for locals based on activities during our visit:

We had dinner outside that evening at a restaurant on Piazza Vecchio and ended up in an extended conversation with the owner, who was interested in hearing about our micronation trip and had some good stories about Bergamo, Lombardy, and San Marino.

The mildly creepy Contarini fountain that evening:

View over to the Camponone bell tower at Piazza Vecchio the next morning from our room . . .

before hitting the road for the drive into the Swiss alps and on to Leichtenstein in the family truckster – our killer diesel Skoda, shown here on the streets of Bergamo:

Categories: Italy, Micronations! | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Blog at WordPress.com.