1 day visit to Bobbio
While in Piacenza, where we have reached on the 22nd of November (read more about it at : The Europe adventure begins), we visited a small place near Sala Mandelli called Bobbio. Seeing as to how we missed our visit to the chocolate festival in Turin due to our missed flight, we were recommended a visit to Bobbio by our host, Luca. He said the kids would enjoy some of the things there including the chocolates and the Ponte Vecchio, also known as the Hunchback bridge or the Devil’s bridge.
Bobbio is a small town located at the south of Sala Mandelli. It would take about an hour by road to reach there from Sala Mandelli and the drive involves you going down the hill where Sala Mandelli is located at and also along a route that is not all that straight. The journey is less than 50 kilometers and I recommend having at least 4 hours for your visit there in Bobbio. We ended up reaching there quite late ourselves and only had 1 hour of sunlight. Despite that, we were able to cover the Ponte Vecchio with some sunlight.
The bridge itself is really unique and it has various humps and levels. It is also not straight and its unique shape is what gives its nickname of hunchback bridge or devil’s bridge. There is nothing really scary there at all in fact. The kids saw the different arc heights which were probably built to allow boats or ships of different sizes to pass through. Mustansir and Shabbir were now able to understand how the passage of a ship could affect the architecture of a bridge.
We then moved on to see the town itself. Bobbio as a town is quite different from Sala Mandelli with much more of a communal feel as houses are closer together as a cluster. The buildings are built with much more polish and structure. At the center of the town is the Church.
This is the first time the kids heard churchbells ringing 🙂
We then went on to look for chocolates but did not find much options. Especially because we were looking for chocolate with no alcohol contents in it. Niente Alcool. Eventually, we settled for a hot chocolate at a nearby cafe. The hot chocolate was really good and with some tarts, the kids had a good time in Bobbio.
We went back home shortly after, spending about 3 hours in Bobbio. Parking was free and cost of things there were also not too high. If we had more time, we would and could have surely stayed longer but we had to go home as it was getting late, the roads were not ideal for late night driving and I had to get up early for a call the next day 🙂
Do check out my son’s post here : http://mustansir.topiwalla.com/blog/2017/11/my-visit-to-bobbio/
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