Veneto Hill Towns: Somewhere Over the Rainbow

As I began this post this morning, we were sitting in the living room of our apartment. The rain from the previous evening and during the night had ended and the clouds had dispersed. When I stepped out onto the patio, the sky was a brilliant blue, and the morning air was cool. One last time, I looked up at the facade of the Madonna dell'Orto church next door. Later, when we came to the water bus stop and looked across the water, we had a crystal clear view of the Dolomites to the north and west.

If you look carefully, you can see the peaks of the Dolomites in the distance.

Now, we are sitting on high-speed train that just left the Venezia Santa Lucia train station and is heading across the causeway to the mainland. The tops of the same mountains I saw so clearly this morning are now wreathed in white puffy clouds. We are on our way to Rome. It is now 1:08 p.m.  on Sunday afternoon. We look forward to having cocktails on our terrace at our hotel in the Monti District shortly after 5:00.

*********

We took another small group tour yesterday, this time up into some hill towns northwest of Venice. Our group was considerably livelier this time, consisting besides us of a couple from New York and their adult daughter and a South African woman who lives in New York and her mother-in-law who lives in Pretoria, South Africa. Given that wine-tasting was on the itinerary, we weren't surprised that the group was more sociable than the one we had traveled with on Friday.

On the way to the water bus stop we discovered a pastry/coffee shop, so we ducked in for an Italian version of a pain au chocolate (chocolate croissant) and a cappuccino. The pastry was delicious, as good or better than the best I've ever tasted of its French cousin. It was so good that I bought another one for the road. 

Not for the first time, we marveled at how inexpensive coffee and pastries are in Venice. Two cappuccinos and two pastries cost us less than 5 Euro. If we'd bought the same thing - as our guide had pointed out to us on Friday - in Austria, Germany or France, the cost would have been twice as much.

Once we were under way, our first stop was the first walled city I've every seen, Marostica, just outside Bassano del Grappa. It had been raining a bit as we approached the town, but within a couple of minutes of getting out of the van, the rain stopped and the skies started clearing. We marveled at our luck as we sat at a cafe on the square pictured below and had an espresso and pastry. (Yes, another one.)

Marostica

Marostica

From Marostica, we drove a short distance to Bassano del Grappa. Along the way, Giovanni, our driver/guide (the same one on the Dolomite trip on Friday), explained to us ("I explain you") about Asiago cheese - which is produced in a mountainous area about 40 kilometers from Bassano - as well as grappa, a liqueur made from grape skins. 

While in Bassano, we took the opportunity to purchase some Asiago cheese. We could have purchased soft, newer cheese that is used in panini or sandwiches, but we opted for the aged. We also had the opportunity to taste various kinds of grappa, but it didn't appeal to me at all.

Ponte Vecchio bridge over the River Brenta, designed by Palladio in 1569.

The River Brenta in Bassano del Grappo.

Bassano

The main square in Bassano.

Purchasing cheese

From Bassano, we drove to Asolo for lunch at a restaurant that specializes in hand-made pasta and regional dishes. I had my first dish of gnocchi, with butter and sage sauce, as my first course, and Mark and I both had omelettes with cheese and ham as our second course. Despite the caloric intake (and this was after three pastries in the morning), I still somehow managed to lose a pound yesterday. (I'll probably make it up today after the carbonara feast we intend to have tonight in a little restaurant down the street from our hotel.)

Asolo. Our restaurant was just up the street on the left.

Asolo

Asolo. Campanile (stand alone bell towers) are ubiquitous throughout the Veneto region and in Venice.

Asolo

Throughout the day, we saw old buildings with painting on the stucco/plaster. This was in Asolo.

Stuffed following lunch, our next stop was at Villa Barbaro (also known as Villa di Maser), designed by Palladio, a famous Venetian architect of the 16th century who is considered one of the most influential architects in Western civilization. His designs had a marked effect on English architecture and, by extension, colonial American architecture. The following pictures were taken from the grounds of the villa.

Our last stop was at a winery not far from the villa where we did some Prosecco tasting. I guess my palate isn't very educated because I preferred the stuff we buy at home. Maybe it was just the winery. The scenery was beautiful, however.

The village of Santa Stefano. Taken from the winery.

Giovanni invited us to taste some grapes (they started harvesting the lower slopes a week ago.) Mark was only too happy to take him up on it.

We all dozed on the way back to Venice in the early evening. It had been another fun day. Different from the one before, but interesting and rewarding. It started pouring with rain on the way, but, almost miraculously, as we started across the causeway to the city, a brilliant rainbow appeared, then a second one. By the time we had unloaded and started walking towards our apartment, the rain stopped. As we approached the train station, I joined dozens of others who were taking pictures with their cell phones of the magnificent sight before us. Truly, Venice is somewhere over the rainbow.

Venice: The Breathtaking Dolomites

I was using words such as "spectacular," "amazing," "moving," "unbelievable," "breathtakingly beautiful." 

We were 7700 feet above sea level, standing in a small parking lot at the end of the road that snakes its way up the ascent to a group of three mountain peaks in the Dolomite mountains known as Tre Cime de Lavaredo. I have seen the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and British Columbia. I seen the Cascades in Washington. I have been in the French Alps. Though I have seen beauty in those places, I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like what we saw yesterday.

This map shows the location of where we were in relation to Venice. 

We were on a small-group tour out of Venice. Mark cycled in the Dolomites in 2009, and I have heard him speak many times of how much he had enjoyed that trip and how beautiful the mountains are. We had originally planned to spend several days cycling up there on this trip. When it became apparent in early July that Mark couldn't cycle anymore and we cancelled our cycling tour, I looked around to see if it might be possible to take a day trip out of Venice while we are here.

We weren't disappointed in the tour we had chosen. Even the weather yesterday seemed to want to help make it a wonderful day for us. The forecast was for rain, so we had lowered our expectations of how the day might work out. As it happened, we set out from Venice yesterday morning under a beautiful, almost cloudless, blue sky.

View from Pieve di Cadore

Our first stop was at the village of Pieve di Cadore, a quaint little place that was the birthplace of the Venetian artist, Titian. Here, we had coffee and a pastry, then walked around a bit taking pictures.

Pieve di Cadore's main square with a statue of Titian.

Titian

Village church with an original Titian altar piece.

Next, we drove to lake Santa Caterina. Imagine living there in the town of Auronzo. We next stopped at a wide spot in the road where I took the two following pictures.

There were eight passengers in our van plus our driver/guide, Giovanni: three women from Iowa who appeared to be a mother and daughters; us; a couple from Los Angeles; and an older woman who was traveling by herself. It seems like there's "one" in every tour group, and she was it in ours. A bit of a sour puss who had no filters on her mouth. 

Fortunately for us, she was in the front passenger seat and we were in the middle row of the van. The advantage of our location became clearer through the day as she moved from talking to Giovanni to the Los Angeles couple behind her. It would have been fine if she was a sparkling conversationalist. She wasn't, and like I said, she didn't have a filter. We learned about her love of bull riding - not doing it, watching it; how she had already booked tickets for Tuscon for her and her sister-in-law, how both it and the train tickets were already paid for. We learned about how high the waves were on her trip to Antarctica and were provided details of who lost their lunch and where they lost it. 

We learned about how she climbed the rigging on her tall-masted cruise ship that she had taken out of Rome around Italy and up to Venice, and I groaned inside when I realized it was the same ship we will be on for our Croatian cruise coming up. When she told Giovanni he should play some Italian music on the radio, he demurred. Without any hesitation at all, she whipped out her iPhone and played a performance of O Sole Mio that she had recorded in a restaurant in Naples. She then moved on to showing videos she had recorded, then - of course - pictures of grandchildren. I had to admire Giovanni's patience.

For lunch, we stopped at Misurina, also on a lake (see below). The skies had darkened considerably by then and it started raining while we were indoors eating pizzas. It stopped, however, as soon as we left Misurina, and as we gazed at the Tre Cime de Lavaredo in the distance, we saw lots of blue sky.

View of Tre Cime de Lavaredo from Misurina. (The third peak is hidden.)

From Misurina, it was climb, climb, climb - the same road that Mark had climbed on his bicycle six years ago this month. As we approached the end of the road, the van was full of gasps and exclamations. The views truly were extraordinary. It was almost a spiritual experience to be there and see that we saw as the clouds constantly shifted, wreathing peaks at times, then floating away. Giovanni - who has made this trip literally hundreds of times over the years - even commented at how extraordinarily lucky we were to be able to see so much so clearly. Two days before, he said, a colleague had taken another group up, and visibility was zero: they were completely enveloped in clouds. We felt truly fortunate.

From the Tre Cime, we descended into the town of Cortina, which is a renowned ski area and was the site of the 1956 Winter Olympics - the first time they were held in Italy.

It was a very, very good day. It was yet another one of those experiences that, afterward, I said if we had to return home the day after it, the trip to Italy would have been worth it.

Cortina

Venice: Wandering

Yesterday, we wandered around Venice. We thought we would go see the Basilica of Saint What's Their Names, taking the vaporetto from Madonna dell'Orto to the next stop, then walking the rest of the way. When we saw the 2.5 Euro entry fee sign, we decided it wasn't worth it. Instead, we focused for a few minutes on the young "artists" who were sketching in the piazza in front of the church.

I took a look over the shoulder of the girl at the left. Um, I wasn't sure what she was drawing, but I admired her effort and wondered what program these American youngsters were in that allowed them to sit in the Campo San Giovanni e Paolo and made "sketches" of what they were looking at (which wasn't entirely clear). I was jealous. How wonderful it would have been when I was 20 years old to sit and sketch in Venice. Sigh.

From there, we wandered through more labyrinthine streets, alleys and passage ways to the the Church of San Giovanni Crisostomo. It was in this church where the protagonist of a favorite series of novels by Daniel Silva, Gabriel Allon, was working on restoring a Bellini altar piece when he was called away on business by the Israeli secret service to solve a murder in Vienna. 

Thence across the Rialto Bridge to the sestiere (quarter) San Polo to see the Rialto produce and fish markets. Venice is divided into neighborhoods or sections, as the map below shows. We are staying very close to the water at the top of Cannaregio, above the second letter "a."

We sauntered through the produce and fish markets, strangers to the world that existed amongst locals who come to the market. They know the rules. They know the rhythm. Mark, on the other hand was upbraided for touching a peach to see if it was ripe. Unfortunately, we didn't know the word for ripe, so I think we got the peaches that were "duro," i.e., hard. In other words, the exact opposite of what Mark wanted. (I knew I should have bought an Italian-English dictionary. That phrase book is totally useless in a pinch.)

The Grand Canal

The capital of a column in the fish market

Octopus? Squid? What's the difference?

Small octupuses ... Um, I don't think I'll partake

After sitting down at an outdoor cafe in a small piazza, we continued on our way, wandering in San Polo and, briefly, Santa Croce before heading back to the apartment for a mid-afternoon siesta. Thereafter followed cocktails and another canal-side dinner.

We. Love. Venice.