As we were sitting outside at the café tables, enjoying our ice cream and my pot of tea, we heard the bell in the church tower ringing and ringing and ringing… We also could hear a drum beating. People were coming out of the church, the first ones carrying flags and a banner of some sort. I thought maybe we were seeing some religious parade, but no, we were witnessing an Italian funeral procession. The people walked very solemnly down the street, accompanying the hearse, to the cemetery which was located at the edge of town. Not exactly something a tourist hopes to see, but interesting nonetheless.
We didn’t want to head back home yet, plus we had planned to dine somewhere other than Pordenone. I looked at the map and saw a town called Belluna. Who could pass up seeing a place with such a beautiful name like that? We chose to stay on the old road as it twisted and would its way up the valley, through the mountains to the other side of our mountains here in the Pordenone area. Here are some pictures we took along the way including some bridges (I wonder why!), both old and new. The old bridge is a railroad bridge, the new is the autostrada (toll super highway.) We guessed the autostrada bridge had to be more than 200 feet in the air. Now, which bridge do you think is more picturesque?
Here is the sight that greeted us as we came to the other side of the mountains.
The town of Belluna is built on the side of a small mountain, with a tunnel burrowed through it so you can access the town from either side without having to drive up and over it. Here is a shot of the “back side” of one of the churches. From the sign on the modern building it appears that there are monks here that make cheese.
It was getting late in the day so we needed to turn around before it got too dark lest we not find our way home. The roads over here are not exactly marked well for easy identification. So we left Belluna to be explored another day. We found a restaurant that evening where the view from our table looked out to the mountains with the lake in the foreground. Even the food was good!
