Moving to Cogne. Italy

 July 11 Monday

It’s hard to leave the beautiful hotel but new adventure awaits. We have our own private bus but is is small which means most of the seats are occupied and people have to use the back seats where you feel all the bumps and curves. Luckily, Nick and I have seats fairly close to the front. 

The scenery is nice. We’re on a major 4 lane road for awhile. The main road goes through a long tunnel rather than over the pass. But we want to see the pass so take a much smaller road. Whew! I wouldn’t want to drive this with the big drop offs and sharp curves! After about 2 hours we get to Saint Bernard’s Pass. This pass has a long history and the dogs are part of it. Now the dogs are cared for and trained by  an organization dedicated to caring for them. They are only up at the pass during the summer now. They have about 40 Saint Bernards. They take them for walks in the mountains. Have training sessions.

The pass also has a museum of the history of the pass. Napoleon took 40,000 troops through the pass. The earlier history is of Saint Bernard building a hospice and chapel at the pass. Hospice isn’t like what we think of but means a place of hospitality and rest. It is hard to imagine the feeling of relief when one reached this hospice point when crossing the pass in the early days.

We visit the dogs and watch a training session. The dog seems to really enjoy it. He know what toys there are and keeps wanting by to get his favorite.

The border between Switzerland and Italy goes right through the pass. We could walk along the road from Switzerland to Italy but it is much more fun and “Roman”tic to walk along the old Roman road to Italy where we have a tasty pasta lunch.

In Switzerland with Chris

In Italy

Walking from Switzerland to Italy

Statue to Saint Bernard

Guard house along the Roman road between Italy and Switzerland

Back in the bus for about 2 more hours of twisty roads and beautiful scenery.

One of the avalanche road protectors

Many of the roads have avalanche protection. This one has nice arches and I actually got a decent grab shot from the bus!

Our destination is Cogne, a little town at the end of a valley. Our hotel is on the biggest square in town and is quite charming. Our room is small but has a balcony and a window on the square. Many evenings there is a man outside playing accordion and the sound of children playing wafts up to our room. Oh and church bells chime hourly.

View from our hotel window

Walk from the hotel to the bus station

Marta does a quick tour of the town showing us the essentials- where is the ATM, grocery store, restaurant where we will have dinner. The town is very small with more visitors than residents but it maintains a really nice friendly vibe.  

Several of us relax in the hotel gardens with a drink before dinner. We have dinner at a newer, bigger hotel run by the same person, Filipo who we will meet later. 

Linda and John enjoying a drink in the hotel gardens

Dinner is plentiful with 4 courses. Sometimes we have a choice of three different items and sometimes it is set. Whoever translated the choices for us didn’t have a real god grasp of English. For example one was “raw with melon” That ended up being thin slices of ham with cantelope. Then there was “shrimp with dill sauce”  that turned out to be a small helping of a white fish and some sauce but it wasn’t dill. It became a bit of a running joke to see what we got and how close it was to what we thought we were getting.