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We started the day in a light drizzle by walking around to see the sights of Bard. First of all, the town of Bard itself is ancient to the extreme. There is one cobblestone street lined with very very old homes, each of which has a teeny tiny sketchy hidey hole basement leading down to who knows what.
There are very old doors, with (we hope) secret carvings in them
and facades still marked by bullet holes, from that time when 400 Savoy troops held off 40,000 of Napoleon's men.
Local zoning must require these slate roofs, because every house has one. Or that's what you do when our town is carved out of a mountain...
The big sight is the fort, which, while only dating to the 1830s, sits in a naturally impenetrable position that has been used for defenses since the Roman times. Here's the diorama of the site.
You get up there on a series of four very inclined funiculars (or not perfectly straight elevators, depending on how you look at it...)
From the top you can look back down into Bard's main drag
Reenact the scientific exploits of the 1950s (thank you again hiking sandals!)
And look up the valley for oncoming French troops (or perhaps blue sky...)
On our way out of town we came up on something even older, the remains of a Roman road with chariot track still visible. Actually this was not just a road, it was a tunnel carved by hand into the side of the rock. The area that you can see is what remains of the tunnel.
And then we left Bard.
biked under cloudy skies
and wound up in Biellla. While waiting for our Air BnB, we were forced to have some gelato -- inedible for the first time ever in our journeys! (Frutti di Bosco and crema, and coffee and chocolate.)
After a relax and stretch, we took a quick spin around Biella, which doesn't have much in the way of tourist sights, but does have a cathedral with a cute Romanesque baptistry
and an excellent tromp d'oeil gothic interior - that's a great cathedral-on-a-budget idea!
and the usual old town center charm.
as well as these everywhere. Eek!
Dinner was delicious pizza and salad at La Tavernetta (no website) where Arah ordered the Pizza Margaret, in honor of our reader.
Then to bed early to be ready for our third hard ride in a row...
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