We continued heading west on minor roads through villages with lots of 30km limits, humps and frequent speed cameras, then took the Brescia tangential (bypass) and a short drive on the main road to Lake Iseo and the lakeside site of Camping Cavelo which was nearly full with mostly Dutch caravanners and a few British motorhomers. It was about two kilometres from the centre of Iseo town so we walked there the next morning to look at the lakeside and do some food shopping. 

The warm weather now broke so it was overcast when we set off the next morning to Bergamo, a small city in the foothills of the Alps. We found some free onstreet parking as it was a Sunday, some distance away from the main tourist area where there were several people loitering around, and headed up the steep path and steps to the gateway into the old city centre. It was quite busy with tourists and churchgoers as we explored the maze of old streets with the Duomo surrounded by tall buildings so rather closed-in compared to other Italian cities, not that we have visited many! Just as we set off back to the van the heavens opened and we got soaked. Taking the route to Milan we joined the autostrada just as another torrential downpour started. Cars were pulling over to shelter under the bridges but one pulled out immediately in front of us. As we were only crawling along we luckily managed to swerve into the empty outer lane and decided to get off the motorway onto flooded roads and parked up for twenty minutes until the rain eased. Once we had recovered we continued on slow main roads passing through Gorganzola but with no cheese aromas, and joined the very busy Milan ring road with several stops to pay small tolls. We eventually reached new roads, not on the satnav, to Rho where we had booked a pitch at a temporary sosta operating for the Milan Expo. Although €25 a night they ran a shuttle minibus to the exhibition site about five kilometres away.

Fortunately the weather was again sunny the next day as we visited the large Expo site visiting the pavilions of many countries. There was meant to be a theme of food sustainability but that wasn't always obvious from the displays. Several had long queues, in particular Brazil with its large rope netting walkway although it wasn't so busy at the end of the day. We enjoyed the well presented and informative Ecuador and Czech exhibits but other countries made less of an impact and we thought the British pavilion was rather low key with its bee theme. There was some free entertainment with bands playing occasionally and a twice daily parade of people dressed as fruit to entertain the children, but virtually no freebies or handouts. The Tree of Life fountain only operated for short periods but was apparently spectacular when floodlit at night. Food was mostly expensive from snack bars or restaurants but we found a Co-op mini-market on the site to buy our picnic.

Returning to get the shuttle bus after a weary but interesting day we got confused by the signage, ending up in the depths of the railway station, and just made it back to the pickup point as another terrific thunderstorm started.