The title is a bit misleading... I have been to Italy 5 times. To sum up why, the food. Those damn Italians make everything taste better. It's not fair! Salads are better. How can anyone possibly make a salad "better" than elsewhere? I answered this one myself when I noticed the chef popping out to the garden beside the restaurant and picking a few herbs. Unlike Canadians, if the food is not excellent, Italians will go elsewhere!
Back to the misleading title. Although we hiked in the Dolomites for a week, we also visited Venice and Verona. Nickie had never been to Venice and although I had been there 2 years ago, it is a spot everyone should experience firsthand. I did warn Nickie that she would not enjoy Venice. Why, you ask? The crowds, which are both unbelievable and disturbing. I cannot imagine living in Venice - I don't know how the locals do it. And the Italians only have themselves to blame. Similar to the French, they have a plethora of sites everyone should see. Unlike the French, Italians are nice to tourists. Entirely their own fault.
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| San Marco Sinking? |
I don't live near an ocean. I know about tides, but was puzzled to see raised platforms being erected in San Marco square. Curious! Then I noticed water coming out of the storm sewers. Lots of water. Definitely not a good sign. We visited San Marco square during a "high" high tide. The raised platforms were about a meter in width and could easily handle a few hundred people. Do recall that I am talking about San Marco square which, incidently, was now a lake. Thousands of people were trying to move along the raised platforms. It only took one tourist to stop and take a picture, for everyone to be standing still.
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| Gondola Rushhour |
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| First game of Marco Polo was played here |
Two full days is sufficient to see a good part of Venice, unless you intend to swim all of the canals. If so, give yourself about 3 weeks.
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| Glass blowing island of Burano |
I guess that I should mention about our flights. Not wanting to risk another fiasco similar to when we flew to Vancouver with Lynx, who went bankrupt prior to our return flight, we booked with Air Canada. Guess what? Air Canada was facing a strike, which would start the day our flight left for Venice! We hemmed and hawed about booking another flight. With 5 days until our departure flight, we decided to book with Air Transat and avoid the risk of not getting to Italy. The day after our flights with Air Transat were confirmed, Air Canada declared the strike had been averted!
Another Italian plus is their transit system. I love talking to Europeans about the non-existent Canadian transit system. They shudder at the cost of taking a train from Rome to Venice, which can be as steep as $95 CAD. I ask them to guess at the price for a train from Toronto to Vancouver. Yes, it is a much longer trip, but can cost north of $5,000. Getting from Venice to the Dolomites is tricky. Reminds me of the punchline for a Rodney Dangerfield joke: "You can't get there from here". We took 5 trains and a bus. I like to have a comfortable buffer between flights. I don't book 30 minute layovers. So imagine how I felt when I realized that 2 of our train connections were less than 10 minutes each! Our shortest was a 7 minute gap between trains. All this in railway stations I had never seen. As a credit to the Italian train system, none of our trains were late and we had no problems. We took a train from Venice to Venice (from San Lucia to Mestre), Verona, Bolzano, Fortezza, then Brunico. Then a bus from Brunico to Pederoa.
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| Hiking in the Dolomites |
A word of caution about town names in the Dolomites. Over the centuries, the area has been under rule from both Italian and German speaking nations. I'm hazy on who invaded whom, but a lot of towns have 2 names. Brunico is also Bruneck. Bolzano is Bozen. It can get quite confusing if you are not aware of this! We stayed at Hotel Pider, in the town of Laval / Wengen / La Valle. I forgot to mention that some parts of the Dolomites have 3 official languages; Italian, German and Ladin. If you have not heard of the Ladin language, you are not alone.
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| Nickie, yelling something about the hills being alive. |
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| Hotel Pider from a distance |
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| Zoom in: Pider is left of the church |
Hotel Pider is a wonderful hotel deep in the Dolomites. I recommend the half board, which (I think) means they feed you breakfast and supper. There are hiking trails outside the front door. Breakfast is quite a nice spread, including scrambled eggs. Supper was beyond intimidating. I'm pretty sure the chef at Pider has never heard of Hamburgers. Every breakfast, we would select that night's supper from a menu. How can that possibly be intimidating? Here is the menu for one of our suppers:
Salatbuffet
Grub aus der Kuche
Kurbiscremesuppe mit Gorgonzolatropfen
oder
Penne mit Thunfisch Perltomaten Sauce
Flank Steak vom Rind mit Krauterkruste
oder
Kohlrabi Eintopf
Kartoffelblatter, Auberginen
Parfait von der Walnuss
Very soon we found out they can provide the menu in English!
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| I think this is a barn |
Hiking in the Dolomites is incredible. It is one of the most beautiful places on this planet. It was almost annoying how many times we had to stop and admire the views. Mind you, the vertical might also have influenced the frequent stops.
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| Hiking above the clouds |
The Dolomites remind me of the Canadian Rockies, in that pictures do them no justice. There are also impossibly verdant fields, where cows graze. I think the cows are on some form of Valium. I would certainly not consider grazing on such steep slopes!
There are many buildings whose purpose at times eluded us. Is it a barn? A B&B? Storage? Some were obviously built on or in a cliff. One building of which we had no trouble determining its use was a restaurant, high in the Dolomites. The view was excellent, the soup amazing and the wine delectable. There is little reason to order a special bottle of wine in Italy. The house wines were far better than Ontario reds. They all tasted great, in part because we had been hiking 3 - 4 hours that morning.
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| Wine is better at altitude! |
Pider provided us with bus passes. Although it would have been easy to hike from the hotel every day, we took advantage of the bus passes and hiked from La Villa (aka Stern) and Badia (Abtei). From Badia, we actually hiked back to hotel Pider.
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| The Dolomites! |
From the Dolomites, it only took 2 buses and 3 trains to reach Verona. It was a breeze! Verona also had large crowds. It boasts a Roman amphitheatre called Arena Di Verona. Since it predates the Colosseum in Rome, it is rumoured that it was used as a template for the Colosseum. Verona is also the site for a play called Romeo and Juliet. It was written by some old guy, possibly Bernard Shaw. One component of this play is a balcony. I took a picture of it, even though I couldn't see what the big deal was all about.
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| Arena Di Verona |
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| Juliet's Balcony |
As with all travel, it was time once again to head home. I developed a tickle in my throat in Verona. We took a train to Venice for our last night, to make the trip to the airport less complicated. The next morning, the throat tickle turned nasty. Perfect timing, getting sick while travelling for 20 hours and crossing 6 time zones. We are recovering nicely (yup, we were both under the weather).
