Italian Alps

 

When the door of our plane opens at the Venice airport we are immediately hit with heat; something we had not felt in quite a while.  We went from mid 60 degree, cloudy weather to mid 90s sunny; what a change!  We wandered around the airport for a bit before we found the car rental lot (naturally on top of a parking garage), got our vehicle for the next week and reminded ourselves to drive on the right-hand side of the road.  And off we go.  We are heading for a shopping mall – we need another outfit or 2 each geared to 90-degree weather.  True to form when you need clothing nothing seems right, but in the end we each get something and then the adventure starts.  We are heading north of Venice to a small town in the  Veneto region which is a wine region specializing in sparkling wine.  Did I say small?  We are staying in a Bed and Breakfast called Villa Toderini and yes there is a fancy house associated with it, but that’s not where the rooms are; we are in a newer building.  The website has some directions, but we find ourselves circling around this small town when suddenly I see a sign for it and we turn.  Still not sure we are in the correct place till I notice the door says Agritourism on it.  We are warmly greeted and shown our room for the next 2 nights.  Room is nice and is actually 2 stories with a twin bed and a chest of drawers up the stairs. 

Veneto Region - UNESCO World Heritage Site

Dangers of a small non touristy town is the lack of English speakers and we know basically no Italian.  With that challenge, we did manage to schedule one wine tasting for the afternoon so in the morning we head off hoping we find another winery open and willing to offer us a tasting or a tour.  We are heading southeast a little bit to more of the Piave region because we think we can find a red wine for Jeff.  Strike out at the first winery, but he tells us the one down the street does tastings so we head that way.  We are literally in the middle of town not out in the middle of the vineyards.  The winery is named Giol.  After wandering around we find the correct spot for tasting and someone is willing to stop loading trucks and give us a tasting.  They have many types of prosecco, couple spumantes and then some table wines including a line with no sulfites.  By the way, the winery is organic.  We start with a dry prosecco and then move on to some other whites before we hit a sparkling red and finish with a couple of reds.  We plot out how many bottles we want to buy because we are taking some on the cruise ship for us and for another couple; plus how much we want to get back to the States.  Make our purchase and head out the door because we need to get going to make our scheduled tasting!

A little more about Giol winery is that it was started in 1427 - there are 5 crypts or areas for storing wines from 1427 and still in use - we may have had a glimpse of one of them.  Originally, the estate or "farm" was owned by the Papadopli family and included all sorts of things like granaries, a dairy, spinning mill, greenhouses and all sorts of workshops. in 1919, Giovanni Giol bought it all and kept some of the industries going and I believe the winery is the only thing there today.  Its other claim to fame is that during WW1 there was fighting in the area and a couple of their big barrels were hit.  Luckily no wine was lost since the bullets/shrapnel did not go all the way through the wood.  They still have the barrels today.

Giol Winery

All the pictures of the area showed hills covered in grape wines with mountains behind and we have not seen that yet.  Yet is the key word as that is what we about to get with our next winery.  We start out on nice sized roads but will end up on not much more than glorified driveways.  We are now in the foothills and it is pretty just like the pictures.  When we find the tasting area, there is a tour group finishing up so we happily check out the view for a few minutes.  Then our tasting starts.  We will taste 5 different sparkling wines (4 proseccos and 1 rose spumante) with some meat and bread.  Our tasting guide is a friendly guy who amazingly has an idea of where we live (first on the whole trip).  As we talk it comes out that he is a golfer and he wants to play Kiva Dunes which is right down the street from our home.  We spend about an hour and a half there and then buy a couple of bottles of wine including one from their number 7 vineyard which they have named "007" for fun.  It is a nice sparkling rose.

This winery is called Vigne Matte which means crazy winery in Italian.  The reason for the name is that the old vines are planted on a hillside among boulders. Yes, among them.  These ancient vines are able to produce wine grapes even when there is a drought because their roots are so deep.  At the winery, there is a poster of one of the owners climbing a boulder to pick grapes.  

We are headed back to our room but would like a little more food.  We almost go to a bar for a light bite, but instead walk back to the gelateria we just past for some ice cream/gelato.  We enjoy that in the shade and then finish our drive, almost passing the driveway yet again.  That night we would join the locals at a very nice pizzeria for dinner.  Well pizza was our dinner while for many of the locals that was only 1 of several courses.  I was shocked to see people eating a decent sized pizza by themselves and then follow it up with a pasta and/or a meat dish.  Most of these people did not have weight problems either.

Vigne Matte

Castel Rotto - Kassel Ruth

Next morning we are off again.  This time we are heading for Castel Rotto which is in the ItalianAlps/Dolomites/Sud Tyrol as in we are going to a mountain town.  Nine years ago, when we had a family trip to Italy, I remember hearing of some interesting war remains from WWI in the Dolomites.  I can’t figure out now where I wanted to go exactly, and we have read good things about Castel Rotto from Rick Steves, so we are headed there.  We are expecting a tourist town with a fair number of Americans because of Rick Steves.  We find a touristy town, but very few Americans.  The town is supposedly a farm town, but to us it feels very much like a ski town that has good hiking routes in the summer.  Our garni which is a cross between a bed and breakfast and a small hotel has included chairlift and bus passes.  I have called the town Castel Rotto, but it is also called Kastel Ruth the difference is that the town while in Italy is heavily German influenced and Kastel Ruth is the German name.  This region was under the Austrian Hungarian Empire for many years until after WW I when it would become part of Italy.  Like when we were in the Basque and Catalonia parts of Spain last year, all of the street signs, advertisements, etc. are in 2 languages – Italian and German.  Most locals speak both languages fluently – English not so much.

Heading along a valley floor with the Alps all around us

World acclaimed Skiers have come from this community

For our first morning, we decide to head to the nearby chairlift that we have a pass for and go up the mountain and do some hikes.  The chairlift takes us to a hut called Marinzen.  At least the huts we visited are places to hang out with food and often some kids' play areas or other entertainment.  The Marinzen is quite busy this day because it is the weekend.  We will do 2 hikes up on this part of the mountains this day.  Oh we are starting at 1,486 meters above sea level so we get winded relatively easily and stop often.  We visit a second hut that day very close to Marinzen but not as busy called Schafstall for a light meal while sharing a picnic table with 2 ladies from Germany.  We did 2 hikes that day because we had not yet got in the European mindset of enjoying the mountain air and just sitting around.  Rather than take the chairlift back down that day we hike back to town.  That evening, we go out to a nice restaurant called Saalstuben and have a very nice meal.

Enjoying our first hike

Heading down the mountain back to our picturesque town

Next morning we are more adventuresome and are taking the local bus to a big gondola so we can go higher up the mountains into the Seiser Alm - Alpe di Siusi.  We are told the buses are quite regular and clean - we were told correct.  We wait maybe 5 minutes and hop on a bus - well I hop on since everyone else is and Jeff was desperately trying to figure out if it was the correct bus.  Happily he did get on and it was going where we wanted.  After a couple of stops we are at the base of the gondola.  We have hit the big time here.  People are everywhere, lots of ticket offices, several parking spots for the buses.  We buy 2 roundtrip tickets and start following people towards the gondolas.  We get in one with several other people and a golden retriever and are off.  Not sure how long we were on it - longer ride than the chairlift which we timed at 26 minutes.  When we get to the top it is an even bigger area than down below.  Now we have shops and a big look out plaza and signs for a variety of places several of which are chairlifts and at least 3 of them are working that day.  After a couple of minutes exploring the immediate area and trying to understand where our All Trails hike app wants us to go we are off.  Oh I should add the Alpe Di Siusi is the largest Alpine meadow and is 20 square miles.  We will hike on a mixture of narrow roads, gravel roads, gravel paths and dirt paths for the hiking we do in the meadow.  We start off walking past a couple of horses who have the day off - there are carriage rides up here.  We will also pass several houses during our walk and be passed by people on electric bikes.  

High Alpine Meadow

Horses enjoying each other

The meadow is full of flowers of a variety of types.  Also I guess from snowmelt we see some small streams in a couple of places.  In fact, early on we had flash backs to the bog in Ireland because the ground was so soggy they had put in a wooden walkway for the hike.   We did not step on it to see if it was a bouncy as the bog.  It was quite pretty up there and we had some mountains further up with a little bit of snow on them.  Since we were in a meadow we obviously had vegetation there, but the mountains surrounding us a little further up had none to very little plant life.  We started out with a plan to do a loop hike and ended up adding little detours to it to see specific things and to stop for lunch.  Our lunch spot was another hut where we each had a pasta dish and a beer.  I really enjoyed the radlers they had at the huts.  A radler is a beer with a fruit juice added to it, mine were always lemon (my best description).  

Loved the undulations with the farms across the meadows

The hut where we ate had a spot off to one side where people could go paragliding.  By chance, someone did take off while we were there.  After he was gone we walked over to that spot and it was a steep drop off.  It was fun to watch him catching updrafts for a while.  After watching him, we decided it was time to head back down to the gondola.  On the way down we would pass several houses that I think were for rent.  Often in this area they only mowed a small area close to the house and left the rest wild.  Well I say that but while we were eating at the hut, a guy with commercial type farm equipment was mowing a field only inches away from the hut's paths.  Later on we would also see farmers mowing the fields and piling it up and then trying to squash it with their tractors.  We suspected it was for feed for the winter.  Oh I forgot to tell you how we could hear cow bells on the walk becuause there are small dairy herds in the area.

Paragliding

Town of Castel Rotto

The town itself is adorable.  Our place is half-way up the part of the mountain with buildings.  When you walk up to it the first part of the walk is steep - dang mountain town!  At the bottom of our road is a pedestrian only set of streets with a few little shops and places to eat.  It is a nice area to wonder around and window shop some. Additionally, many, many buildings in town are decorated with painted images and everything is neat and clean.  One house we really liked had a vignette for each month on it.  Also, the church bell tower is well known because it is very reliable source of time for the locals and a source of pride because of its size.  We were really impressed with the inside of the church.  There are gorgeous wood carvings on the end of the pews and lots of very pretty paintings on the inside walls.

in the middle of town

The parish church of Kassel Ruth is also known as the cathedral of the mountains

Wonderful wood craft

This was our favorite of the many buildings with vignettes for each month

Next day - cows and rain

Our 3rd day up in the mountains we declared a rest day.  We would go up the local chairlift and walk to the 2nd hut and hang out for a while and pretend we were European.  Mother Nature put a damper on our plans.  As we were riding up the 26 minute open chairlift it started to rain.  First a light drizzle and then onto a full light rain.  We both had on jackets we thought were waterproof.  The jackets disappointed us in that we were both a bit wet when we made it to the top.  Decided the hut right there looked really good and had a light lunch.  When we were done the rain was gone and it was dry outside so we reverted to our original plan and looked for a spot to hang out.  There were 2 chairs a bit away from all the stuff going on so we headed for them.  We sat down and were commenting on the small herd of cows nearby; how they had snuck into a pond, about the man petting one and laying with them.  We were basically in the shade and one cow decided we had the right idea and came over to us.  When it was clear the cow wasn't leaving we did.  We moved a little bit away and relaxed and enjoyed ourselves.

Very friendly cows

Hut offered plenty of places to lounge after our lunch

Last day on the mountain,we did another hike starting from the local chairlift.  The hike would take us over to the Alpine meadow (edge) and under the gondola .  It was a good hike, but a couple of parts bordered on Jeff trying to kill me again.  He was thwarted by the local park people who had built railings in areas from downed pine trees.

Gondola we rode the other day to the Alpine meadow

Little chapels

Evenings

Being in a small town, it could have been boring.  It was not.  Seems one night we were there it was the monthly night that they have a dumpling festival.  We of course attended.  Now their dumplings look nothing like any dumpling I had ever seen.  Think oversized meatball with bread crumbs and various other ingredients.  It all made us think of a church chicken dinner in Illinois.  There were big tents where people were cooking and picnic tables where we all ate.  You had a choice of spinach and ricotta cheese dumplings, bacon dumplings or speck dumplings.  Then there was a choice of salad or goulash for a side.  Wine and soft drinks were bought from a trailer.  We weren't too impressed with the dumplings.  We did enjoy the music that was performed.  It was an adult traditional music group and then 2 young boys playing the accordion.  No dessert so we finished the evening off with gelato.

Bottom right shows what they used to cook the dumplings

 

Another night there was a folk dancing presentation in the same spot - the town square which was in front of the church.  We had gone out for dinner and was desperately trying to get our check and pay so we could watch the dancing.  The dancer's costumes had hints of a German style to them.  The men were in lederhosen of course.  One guy in the group explained their costumes in several languages so we did hear a little about them in English.

Venice

We drove to Venice in the morning so we could meet friends for a tour at noon.  It was the real hidden side of Venice.  Our guide took us to areas that the locals inhabit and on quiet side streets. It was amazing to go from the craziness of St Mark's Square and then suddenly be in a quiet narrow side street.  Narrow as in 2 people wide.