Bassano del Grappa

Why take a train ride to Bassano del Grappa?

The obvious reason is to visit the town famous for one of Italy's favorite after dinner drinks, Grappa.  Having a little glass of this will help you digest even the heaviest meals. Of course they only take it for medicinal purposes.  
Once we got there we found that this town has much more to offer than just Grappa.  

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Yes, even over here Danna finds fabric stores.
This picture is for Sandra, Patti and Cindy.

On our map it showed a picture of Temple Ossario, looked great from the outside but it is closed for interior renovations.
















We walked through town to "Ponte deli Alpini", a symbol of the town.  

The bridge is a wooden structure rather than the usual steel and concrete ones you see everywhere else.

Original bridge was built in the 16th century and has been destroyed and rebuilt many times. Now it is a pedestrian walkway linking the two sides of the river.

We stopped for a picture on the bridge with the castle in the background.

The river banks are lined with colorful buildings whose construction has a German influence.

The town loves the Alpini and here is a statue recently placed at the West entrance of the bridge.  It is called "Il Bacio" or "The Kiss".

Here is our version.
Notice how similar Danna's hat is to the Alpini's hat.

At the "Poli Grappa Museum" we saw small stills through to ones that could keep a family happy for months.

There is a tasting room and we tried a couple of different flavors.  The flavor varies depending on the type of grape and distillation method used.  A couple bottles were brought home so we will let you know if Grappa really works as a digestive.









Now this is aroma therapy, you could smell a variety of the different types of Grappa.

On our way back to the train station we stopped for a gelato, guess what they even had a Grappa gelato.  Very cool, refreshing and 40% alcohol content.  While having our gelato we met a couple from Trento, Giorgio and Roberta.  Conversation started when Giorgio, as he was going up for seconds, told me the coffee gelato was the best.  What was going to be a quick gelato stop resulted in a great conversation.  You meet the best people over a gelato. Hopefully we will get a chance to visit with them or just share a gelato later this summer.

Time to go home but we will definitely return for a longer visit later this year.

The trains have been fantastic for all of our adventures. Ticket agents through to train punctuality cannot be criticized. We will definitely miss them when we go back to Canada.