First taste of Italy, Aosta.

Zagan the motorhome is sat in a beautiful valley with snow-capped mountains all around him, unfortunately in his immediate vicinity is a motorway, several other noisy roads and a huge factory of some sort creating an eternal hummm. That’s Italy for you, always full of contrast.

Why is he here? Well he’s being a bit cheeky as we wanted to visit the town of Aosta and the aire (which is just the other side of the factory) is €12 a night. We don’t need an aire after we used the services at the place we stopped last night, so we’re ‘free-bagging/wild camping/free camping/sleeping in a car park’ call it what you will, in a spot close to the town centre (N45.73152, E7.32426).

Last night we slept like logs in La Thuile, the electric heater keeping the van toasty warm. The forecast snow never appeared, just a good old pouring down of rain. We tried to get the TV working, but couldn’t get a signal, finally realizing that the bowl of mountains around us may have something to do with it. Instead of TV we used the maps and guidebooks to help us to plan a vague route, and the first stage of that was to head back down the valley to a town our friend Mandy had recommended, Aosta.

We retraced our tyre tracks from yesterday, then ventured along the valley, the snow suddenly disappearing from around us replaced by rolling green pastures and vineyards. Dotted along the edges of the valley are castles in various shapes and forms, because in the Middle Ages the valley was a passage towards Alpine passes. Since it wasn’t directly controlled by any authority, it was easy to take the land and appoint yourself as its lord; therefore, local nobles moved away from the towns, in search of land where they could extend their domains. Castles, towers and fortified houses arose on unaccessible elevations to dominate vast stretches of land from above and collect tolls from travellers using the route. As we made sure we didn’t use the motorway (which are signposted in green here, non-motorway roads are blue – very confusing) we managed to avoid paying any tolls to landowners or Government.

Memorial on the road to Aosta to those Italians who died after they swapped sides in WWII

Arriving in Aosta we followed satnav to a car park by the chairlift, its little white gondolas whisking skiers across the valley and up to the top of the nearest patch of snow. The car park was typically Italian, absolutely rammed, packed with cars parked on every piece of tarmac possible, even if it wasn’t a marked space. A slow crawl around the edge told us that we weren’t going to fit in there, so we backed out and followed the signs to a virtually empty car park just a couple of hundred metres away.

After a bite to eat we left Charlie in Zagan (he’s still limping a bit after slipping on some ice) and went for a look around. It was like a different world compared to snowy, empty La Thuile. The sun was shining, the schools were emptying out and the place felt full, vibrant and alive. Those not grabbing a bite to eat or shopping sat in the sunshine and watched the world go by.

Aosta was founded in 25 BC by Emperor Augustus and soon became a strategic centre for the control of the newly conquered territories. The design of the town was a military camp style rectangle, surrounded by massive walls, a lot of which still remain standing. The town bills itself as an ‘Open-Air Museum’, and we timed our visit perfectly, the gates to the Roman Theatre re-opening post lunch, just as we reached them. We were the only people looking around the theatre, the four other people in there were using it as a cut through. While we’ve seen many Roman theatres and amphitheatres, this one was still impressive due to the close proximity of the houses and the backdrop of the mountains.

We moved on through one of the city gates to a church buried beneath another church, where the chap looking after the place seemed delighted to have some visitors, it is a bit tucked away.  He went on to loudly but earnestly spend about half an hour explaining in Italian with random English words thrown in about the church, the church next door, the church above, the rest of the town, the castles along the valley, how to cross the road and who knows what else as we could only understand a fraction of it.

Porta Pretoria was once the edge of the town, now it houses a restaurant and tourist office.

We left clutching several versions of the same leaflets and maps and made our escape to the quiet of the church and cloisters across the road. Here a large ‘Silenzioso’ sign welcomed us to where the monks live, and while I cringed at the noise made when I stepped on a dry leaf we could hear a couple of them chatting away in the rooms above us.

Spotted this cheeky monkey in the choir stalls

A few more sights from our tourist map were visited, but we’ve only done about half of the ones on there because it was getting on for gelato time. People do rave about Italian ice cream and since being here I know why, I have not tasted any ice cream back home that comes anywhere near it – even the stuff that says it’s Italian. I found the place where locals were buying from (always a top tip) and chose a random flavour, something of Sicily, which turned out to be almond with bits in it. Jay had a chocolate cake mix-esque flavour and we devoured them on our walk back to the van.

Oh yes – it spins around!!

Sunshine, sights and ice cream – even if the parking is noisy, I like Aosta.

Ju x

Bonus pic – loved the menu for this local eatery, especially the Nutella Pizza and Kebab Risotto!