Our Blog - Lombardy Italy Trip - 2025

Our Spring trip this year is to Italy (I know, yet again, we find ourselves driving to Italy!) This time, we stayed in the Northern area, in a region called Lombardy. I'll give a bit of history as we cross the border. I've also broken this into 2 sections, since I needed a bit more time to finish and I wanted to start getting the blog up. Part 2 will arrive soon, I promise!

Part 1

But first, we decided to tack on a day at the beginning to celebrate our wedding anniversary. We didn't celebrate it on the actual date, but close enough. We headed towards Italy and stopped for a walk up a hill to visit the remains of the Chateau de Termes. This is one of many hilltop "Cathar" castles, this one held by Raymond of Termes. The castle fell to Simon de Montfort after a 4-month-long siege in 1210, the hardest siege of the first period of the Albigensian Crusade. It is a nice 15 to 20 minutes walk from the village and it has really good information, including a short film (with subtitles in multiple languages).

Then an overnight at the Auberge du Vieux Puits and the Michelin-starred restaurant of Gilles Goujon. We stayed there once before, right after France reopened after one of the COVID lockdowns but wanted to experience it the way it was meant to be (instead of tables set up in the parking lot since only outdoor seating was allowed). This one has small story, so I have made an entire page for the Auberge du Vieux Puits and the chef, Gilles Goujon.

From there, we headed to the border! And like every time we drive past Nice and into Italy towards Genoa ... we hit delays due to construction traffic .. Ugh. Just before the border, we headed down from the autoroute to the Mediterranean for a short walk along what little beach we could find. The beaches on the French Riviera don't tend to be that nice from a sand point of view, but the views are amazing!

Mind you ... Lucy was able to find some great sand to roll in after a dip in the water.

One note that I need to start with ... I tend to use the "English" spelling for cities instead of the Italian spelling. As an example, I use "Mantua" but the Italian spelling is "Mantova". It made things somewhat interesting searching for information since sometimes I needed to search the Italian spelling.

Our first stop in Italy was at the Certosa di Pavia Monastery just to the North of the city of Pavia. Not sure why, but it was free the day we visited! It was built between 1396 and 1495 on the Northern end of the Visconti Park, a large hunting park. On the other end of the park was the Castle of Pavia, belonging to the Visconti dukes of Milan. It is one of the largest monasteries in Italy, with the church, 2 cloisters, a library, and a refectory.

Our first Italian overnight was in the city of Pavia, where we stayed on the edge of the downtown area. It was a perfect place ... convenient to get in-and-out of the city by car, but also just 5 minutes to the middle of the busy city. A plus was private parking, which is always difficult to find so close to the center of the historical city.

As we left, we took Lucy on a little walk in a park (where she decided to also take a few swims in a little stream) before heading East. Next stop was the city of Cremona, which since the 16th century has been renowned for its violin manufacturing, including the home of Stradivarius violins. Another very interesting overnight stay, in a mansion that dates back to the second half of the 1400s.

That is all for Part 1 ... I'll get Part 2 up shortly, which will cover the 2nd half of the trip.