Forte di Bard

Still backblipping. The weather forecast was very bad today, and it wasn’t wrong. It was raining as we breakfasted, so we decided to do an indoor activity in the morning, and see if the weather improved enough for a short walk in the afternoon.

Many other people had the same idea as us: visit the Forte di Bard, a monumental fortress housing the Museum of the Alps. When we arrived, a double-decker coach was completely blocking the entrance to the car park while it disgorged about a hundred Swiss pensioners. Luckily Lorenzo is a very patient Italian driver and doesn’t do honking. Eventually it moved off and we squeezed down the ramp. Inside, all the pensioners were queueing for the panoramic lifts which only take a dozen people at a time, so we walked up to the top of the fortress, where the museum is.

It’s a large and very good museum covering many aspects of Alpine life and history. We must have spent a couple of hours there. At the end of the circuit, there was an amazing exhibition of large-format Alpine landscape photography by Davide Camisasca. Just beautiful (extra).

We were also delighted to discover that the floor below was housing an exhibition of this year’s wildlife photographer of the year. The pensioners were safely ensconced in the restaurant having lunch by now, so we had a leisurely coffee in the bar and then spent an hour looking at that. Wonderful photos. We’d have taken the panoramic lift back down, but a horde of children were queuing for it, so we skipped the line by walking down a couple of levels to the next lift.

It was well past lunchtime by now and absolutely pouring with rain. Lorenzo suggested cancelling our picnic and finding a bar for sandwiches and drinks. Amazingly, when we arrived at the car park barrier, the same coach driver was parked across the exit while he loaded his now replete pensioners.

Eventually we emerged and drove to a nearby village where we found a bar that was a) open and b) prepared to serve lunch to seven people at 3:30 pm. The toasted panini/piadine/focaccia were pretty decent too. Still raining, and too late to consider a walk anyway, so we headed back to the hotel.

In the evening, Lorenzo escaped to see his friend again, dropping us once more in Aosta for shopping followed by dinner. We had a really excellent meal in another traditional restaurant, l’Oca (the goose): my tomato risotto generously doused in melted fontina was divine, as was S’s bacalao, and everyone else was very pleased too. Even A, who received a roasted pork knuckle nearly as big as her head. We’ll probably find a reason to dine there again as there were other items on the extensive menu we wanted to try, and given the lateness of our lunch we were not very hungry.