Sunday 11 June 2023
Today we saw so many fluffy St Bernards! That’s because every few kilometers along the St Bernards Pass road there would be somewhere selling St Bernard stuffed toys. Mainly, though, it was a stunningly beautiful road and we were very surprised to find ourselves surrounded by snow and pretty flippin’ cold at the lake at the top of the pass. It was 26C when we left Besancon that morning!
The restaurant at the lake was busy but seated us after ten minutes, and then served up a really good mixed antipasti, including wild mushrooms in cream and very soft and gently pickled onions. Our bowls of gnocchi were warming, starchy and cheesy.
Fifty minutes later we were sweltering at 28C in the town of Aosta on the Italian side, wandering around the old centre to find the various Roman ruins and remains. Aosta has the most amazing situation, in a river valley but hemmed by mountains apparently on all four sides (the river actually twists its way into a gorge around the corner, eventually out into the huge Po valley that makes up most of the north of Italy). Very handsome and probably much busier in ski season. I tried an anice granita and liked it.
We wound up another hour or so down the road, out of the mountains and onto the dead flat Piedmont plains. The small city of Vercelli has an amiable old town (are there any non-descript Italian towns?!) and our B&B for the night, Casa di Nonna, was an amazing 19th century chamber with titanic ceilings and stuffed with antique porcelain and glassware. Sensible people would have flinched at the idea of having B&B guests staying among so many breakables! Dinner, pizza, on the street, was good, then the mosquitoes arrived just as we finished and so we ducked inside for a coffee and the bill.
Related Images: