The Easy Hikers have been going on country hikes and urban walks in roughly even proportions for well over 10 years now, and I still cannot decide which of the two I would go for if I could pick only one.
Simply stated, the problem is this: a good country hike beats a good urban walk ten times out of ten, but a bad country hike can give you nightmares for years to come.
Country hikes can go horribly wrong in so many more ways than urban walks where the range between the worst and the best possible experience is much narrower.
In the country, it is not only the mountains that are higher: the stakes are, too.
Because towns are so much more convenient to explore: you can just get off the train and have a go – a walk – at it. If the town in question is lovely: great.
And if it’s not, you can just shrug it off, look for a nice restaurant – the worse the experience, the fancier the restaurant will have to be: you must create some sort of a happy memory for your day out – and after your meal, take one last stroll down the high street, perhaps buy something nice or amusing and then return to your holiday accommodation.
You have invested little and therefore less to lose. And sometimes, with that small investment of yours, you may even win big. Like in a lottery!
Which brings us to the town of Vercelli in provincial Piemonte, located somewhere between Turin and Milan in the middle of what is Italy’s most agriculturally productive and most boring landscape: the flat and featureless Po basin.
Vercelli itself is an attractive and friendly little town, with charming restaurants, …
… some old-fashioned coffee shops …
… and a magnificent medieval church, the Saint Andrew’s Basilica, which was built in the 13th century together with an abbey and a hospital, meant to serve the pilgrims who were making their way to Rome on the Via Francigena.
A town centre stroll, a day’s rest, a good meal: this was, more or less, what we had expected to find. But much to our surprise, we found ourselves in the middle of a party.
Vercelli is the winner for us
On the day we arrived, Vercelli was beginning to celebrate its biggest annual event: a spectacle called La Fattoria in Città, the Farm in the City …
… which has been held every last week in May since 2005, with the exception of the past two years when the pandemic had pooped the party.
The 2022 edition was therefore the town’s first country fair in three years and designed to be the biggest ever, making up for the disappointments of 2020 and 2021.
In the mornings, Vercelli was filled with large groups of school children from all over the region, brought to Vercelli by their teachers to watch a large exhibition of farm animals – cows, chickens and sheep – that would have been part of the everyday experience of children 60 or 70 years ago but have become a rare sight since.
In the evenings, in the company of their parents, these children could then see where all these cute farm animals eventually wind up.
Essentially, of course, the event was little more than a good excuse for a bash, a pretext for bringing out the balloons and for letting small children run around happily. And for everybody to eat ice cream.
This is how all festive events in Italy unfold – and even some non-festive ones such as the Information Day that was hosted – in the “fringe” of the main event – by a mental health charity underneath the cloister arches of Saint Andrew’s Abbey.
Unlike previous editions of the Fattoria in Città, the 2022 edition took possession of virtually the entire town. The fair extended from the municipal park near the train station, where, also for the first time, the exhibition of farm animals was complemented by a display of rarer and – nominally – more interesting species such as these predator birds …
… to the pedestrianized high street where bands were playing in the evenings …
… and to Via Garibaldi, the tree lined alley on the boundary of the town centre.
This street was the true heart and soul of the party – and the place where all of Vercelli met in the evenings throughout the three-day event.
To be perfectly frank: if it had not been for the Fattoria fair, Vercelli would merely have been a routine one-night stopover for us, and we would not have bothered to post about it.
As it was, however, not only were we well fed and entertained, we also experienced a facet of Italian life that is not normally on the tourist agenda. This is what we wanted to share with you.
So do we suggest you go to Piemonte in late May 2023 to attend next year’s edition of the Vercelli country fair? Well, if you want to go, we are sure you will be having a good time, but the point I am really trying to make is a more general one.
Holidays should not be a rush from one top-rated tourist destination to the next. We should also take time to visit what may look “second rate” and “common”, because these “common” places often reveal what is typical and essential.
Our host countries are, after all, more than randomly thrown-together jumbles of museums, cathedrals and seaside sunsets. We should be curious about everything that gives these countries their unique flavour, above all curious about their people and the ways in which they go about their lives.
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it can breathe life into your holiday – often in quite unexpected ways and places.
