Northern Italy Trip September 2015, Part 2: World Heritage Site Tour in Lombardy, Part 1: Crespi d’Adda + a bit of Mont Blanc

Date: September 20, 2015

「Google Timelineによる軌跡」

Mont Blanc tunnel, a small stay in France is expensive

This day was blessed with fine weather from the morning, but I do not have much time to stay in Aosta. Nevertheless, I thought I’d take a quick look at Mont Blanc, so I drove a little north from Courmayeur. However, I found a ropeway stop, but I didn’t know which is Mont-Blanc, because I didn’t do a proper research, and I didn’t know how long it would take to go up the ropeway to the mountain, and I was too light to go up the mountain, so I gave up this ropeway.

そのかわりシャモニー側に行けばよくモンブランが見えるかも、さらにイタリアのクールマイヨール側からフランスのシャモニー側に[highlight]「モンブラン・トンネル」[/highlight]が面白そうなので、これを通過してみることにしました。

がしかし、この通過が高くついた（涙）。まずこのトンネルの通行料ですが、往復で55.2ユーロにVATが22%加わり合計65.15ユーロ。かなり高い！！ちなみにこの往復券は7日間有効だとか。しかし、僕の場合はせいぜい2時間といったところ。

In addition, this tunnel is about 11km long with a speed limit of 70km/h. There is one lane each way. It is straight and monotonous. It was not uninteresting, but it was ordinary (laughs). 11km, so it took less than 10 minutes to drive.

What was more disappointing was that the morning on the French side was shaded by the mountain and it was dark and cold. We went up to the slightly higher ground in Chamonix, but the view of Mont Blanc from Chamonix was so close that I honestly had no idea which was the top.

After all, there was a ropeway to go up to the opposite side of the mountain here, but I gave up sightseeing Mont Blanc after all because I couldn’t read the time here. I wonder what I came here for… If I had one more day to spare, I would have spent the whole day in this area. I gave up crying because I had many plans after this, and returned to the Italian side by the Mont Blanc tunnel again in less than an hour. It was the first waste of money in this trip.

Return to Courmayeur and check out again.

I was a little disappointed, but it was a good way to pass the time. Actually, I hadn’t checked out and paid the hotel I stayed at yesterday. It was Sunday and the hotel staff didn’t show up until 10am. What a mess! Breakfast was included in the price, but the café where breakfast was prepared was adjacent to the hotel but seemed to be run by a different owner, and the staff of this café could not handle check-out naturally, so we had to wait until the hotel owner came.

I couldn’t wait that long, so I thought I’d ask the owner to make a proper payment from my credit card registered with Booking.com later, but I thought that would be too much trouble. But fortunately, when I came back to Courmayeur again, it was just about 9:30 a.m., so I dropped by the hotel again, and the owner came to the hotel, so I was able to pay locally without any problem.

To Crespi d’Adda, a worker’s utopia

We checked out of the hotel safely, so we headed for our next destination. Our destination is a small town called “Crespi d’Adda” in the eastern suburbs of Milan. It is registered as a world cultural heritage.

In the 19th century, a man named Christoffel Crespi built a spinning mill here on the banks of the Adda River, and at the same time, he built not only houses for the workers but also a church, educational facilities, and a common cemetery. Mr. Crespi was a worker-oriented person, which was rare in those days. It was like an Italian version of Tomioka Silk Mill.

This factory began operating in the late 19th century. Its heyday seems to have been around the time of World War I. It was used for a while after that, but stopped operating completely in 2003. In fact, it was before that in 1995 that it was selected as a World Heritage Site. Currently, it can only be seen from the outside because it is privately owned. I think that it could be opened to the public as a museum, but there may be a reason why it is not. I guess there is no fever of being selected as a World Heritage site like in Japan. However, it seems that they are renewing their facilities for the Milan Expo in 2015 and are exhibiting something at the Expo site, so I have a feeling that there will be some progress towards tourism in the future.

In addition, there was a banner behind the church in the town that described the history of the town. I took a picture of it for the time being and decided to read it slowly later.