A few weeks ago Aisling and I ran off to Italy, visiting Milan and Bergamo. Trust me, there is no better way to prepare for Cambridge exams than to ignore them completely for a week. After all, what's the risk? If you fail, you only get kicked out of uni. No pressure.

But this seemed like too nice of an adventure to skip and Ryanair was pretty much giving away the tickets (seriously, the Cambridge-Stansted return train ticket cost more than a flight to Italy!).

The best way to explore Milan is just to go and get really lost. Which is pretty much what we did every day, running around and eventually finding our way back with a small paper map. Of course all the touristy stuff looks lovely and the Duomo is especially impressive, but the best were the  nice parks and the random small restaurants and bars along the canals.

However, out of the two places, Bergamo is definitely the more impressive. The old town just towers over the rest of the place from a small hill. It's absolutely amazing and walking through its old narrow streets feels like a film set for the Assassin's Creed movie, without the VFX. As usual, I'll let the pictures tell most of the story. 

We definitely got a good workout climbing up and down to the Old Town, and up even further to the San Vigilio Castle. It's a small place, so you can see everything in 2-3 days, but it's a town that most people totally forget about. Everyone just uses its airport as a cheap way to get to Milan, while Bergamo is just as cool of a destination!

Finally, I have a funny confession to make. On our last night in Italy, we were walking around trying to find a nice place for dinner and I spotted this burger place which looked really cool. Of course, we were like "Burger? In Italy? Sacrilege!" and walked on. But in the end we changed our minds and had dinner there. And even if it's sacrilege, I have zero regrets! It was the best damn burger I've had in a long time.

The one thing I do slightly regret, is that I didn't know the Bergamo Historic Grand Prix was on around the time we were there and we missed it by a day. It looked amazing, but there is always the next time!