Vicenza

In Vicenza, the only place open for tourists to visit on a Monday is the Tourist Information Centre. This is staffed by a brave and multilingual woman who tells everyone that enters that the only significant attractions that are open are 3.5 kilometres away, up a steep hill, and no, there is no public transport that will get you close. 

"How pissed off do you reckon she is?" asked Lyn. 

We weren't bothered because we already knew that I'd made a big mistake in making Monday our Vicenza day. We took ourselves on a walking tour looking mostly at the outside of buildings.

The day had begun with a walk to Bolzano Station, a train to Verona and a change for a train to Vicenza. Along the way Lyn chatted to some Australians who'd been driving in Italy for 3 months. I was impressed. Then they showed us photos of driving through a blizzard in the Dolomites. Madness.

 We checked into our hotel, found lunch, and began our wander through Vicenza, beginning with this gate.

Looking at the outside of buildings does make sense in Vicenza. This is where the architect Palladio made his name. Before, during and after Palladio's career, the good burghers of Vicenza proceeded to stuff their smallish city with grand buildings. Everywhere you turn they loom over you, classical, symmetrical and designed to impress.

I found Palladio's sculpture. He appears to be thinking, "How can I possibly stuff another building into this city?"

Of course, Lyn succeeded in finding one of the massive churches open. 

We needed a gelato. The proprietor was delighted we were Australians. He proceeded to tell us how he had taken his mother to Australia on a long holiday. They'd been reunited after most of his childhood was spent in an orphanage. Then he had emigrated to Canada. She had since died, and he wept a little. Then we were shown his family photos on the wall. His granddaughter is the 5th generation gelato maker in the family. (Anyway, eventually we got our gelato. Lyn had vanilla and I had pumpkin. Excellent.)

As we left we heard him telling the next customers, "They were from Australia!"

This is a long post for a day without wow moments. Sometimes though, the times you remember are not in the photos.

Tomorrow we begin the long journey home.

Ritten-Renon

Almost everything in this part of Italy is written in both Italian and German because, throughout history, the region kept changing hands, a prize for whoever won the last war. 

So today, in beautiful sunshine, we caught the cablecar up to the Ritten plateau. The view was stupendous. Lyn infamously chickened out of a cablecar ride in Malcesine some years ago. Times have changed. I think she would admit she enjoyed today. 

At the top we caught the little train to Klobenstein. I'd planned two connected walks. Off we strode.

It was all alpine architecture, livestock with bells and cute churches.

At the cutest of these was a war memorial.  If you look closely you'll notice that the parishioners chose the wrong side - twice.

(It is a very sad memorial. Still - I think you can guess what happened to the Jewish population.)

To our right there was a broad alpine valley, then mountains, the Dolomites.

At the furthest point of the walk was a viewing point for the local earth pyramids. These peculiar structures form when hardened earth underneath large rocks erodes more slowly than surrounding soil. The result is spikes of dirt with rock caps.

The views were special.

We backtracked to do a shorter walk through a pine forest. At the occasional viewpoints we could see that the tops of the mountains were getting a little cloudy.

We returned to the station cafe for lunch and beer. Ordering food here for us happens in a mixture of Italian, German and English. 

We retraced our course by train and cablecar to Bolzano. It was a terrific day. We finished off with a great dinner at an Indian(!) restaurant. 

Castles are always uphill

What a dreadful night! We lost power while preparing dinner and couldn't raise our contact for this apartment in any useful way till 10.00 this morning. We spent a miserable night in the dark. He arrived with us furious with him and him deeply apologetic.  Obviously he'd been out on the tiles. 

We decided to proceed with the plan for the day, a walk to Castle Roncolo/Runkelstein. It was steadily, then steeply, uphill all the way. We passed other castles and vineyards as we walked through the outskirts of Bolzano. 

Much of the walk was by the river.

Eventually we tottered into the castle and straight into the osteria. We wanted a solid german meal. Lyn's schnitzel and fries and my mixed grill with dumplings and sauerkraut met that requirement.  Truly, we spent two weeks in Sicily and never saw this much meat in total!

The castle itself is famous for its secular frescoes.

It had some decent views too.

We walked downhill back to Bolzano much more briskly and both crashed for a couple of hours. Tonight we plan to treat ourselves to an Indian restaurant rather than risk our electrical system.

Bolzano

Apparently a train colliding with a "large animal" explained why our train started 30 minutes late today. (Elephant? Bison? Gorilla? St Bernard?) It made up time and we were only 15 minutes late into Bolzano. 

We found our excellent apartment, shopped, had lunch, slept and then walked to the Archaeological Museum of South Tyrol. The city looks and sounds German. There are German speakers everywhere. 

The museum is devoted to Otzi, the copper age body found in a nearby glacier. You can look at his corpse but his clothing, weapons and tools are more interesting.  Lyn raved about the quality of the exhibition. This is a reconstruction of Otzi.

He died violently over 5000 years ago.

Next stop was the tourist information centre where a very helpful lady told us there was a public transport strike tomorrow. We will plan accordingly. 

Down the road was the externally exuberant duomo.

Inside it was so gloomy that I struggled to see the frescoes. 

Lyn liked the front door.

The walk home was via the shops where we discovered an inexplicable porcupine and Lyn bought me a t-shirt with duck on it.

Past Lives and Pasta

Faced with yet more rain, I thought the highly-rated archaeology museum would be a good idea. After a damp walk we discovered that the museum is only open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. How frustratingly Italian! 

Onwards we trudged. The Adige was high and flowing very fast. We crossed it on the Roman Bridge which stood from 100 BC to 1945, when the Germans blew it up. The Italians rebuilt it on the original foundations with the original material. 

Across the river was the Duomo. It turned out not to be opening till 11.00 so we had a cappuccino. It proved worth the wait. It is a basilica, built upon an older basilica, built on a basilica built by St Zeno in the 4th Century. Bits of the first church are still under the floor.

There were various medieval wonders too, like frescoes and a giant baptismal font carved out of a single block of marble. 

The cathedral proper boasted numerous chapels and Lyn lit numerous candles. While Lyn was paying her fiery devotions I studied the frescoes on the apse. The 12 apostles seemed rather startled that Mary was ascending to heaven on a cloud. You'd think, given their experiences up until that point, that nothing much would surprise them.

After the traditional afternoon nap we went to a pasta-making class. It was a multinational gathering: a young English woman, an Israeli couple, a German couple, and American couple and our Italian hosts. We made tagliatelle and ravioli, drank wine, ate our creations and generally had a great time. Our fingers are crossed for the young Israelis.

In fair Verona where we lay our scene

Verona is the setting for three of Shakespeare's plays. A star attraction is Juliette's House. Lyn doesn't want to go there now because:

1. Juliette wasn't a real person

2. Juliette wasn't based on a real person

3. It isn't Juliette's house

4. Shakespeare had never been to Verona. 

We didn't hurry out of the house because it was pouring rain. When we did leave, our reject shop ponchos proved inadequate so we bought umbrellas.

The only sane option was to get indoors so we visited the Castelvecchio Museum. The castle was built by the La Scala family who ran Verona in its Renaissance glory days. Their heraldic symbol was a a ladder (la scala). The modern city uses the castle as an art museum. The castle provides great views of the Adige River and the historic bridge across it.

We walked back to the apartment (via Aldi), had lunch and took the afternoon off. The rain finally stopped and by about 5.00 we were at Verona's fabled arena. It hosts opera and concerts nowadays but in 30 AD it was gladiators and wild beast hunts. It is interesting to think it originally was even bigger till a medieval earthquake made the outer wall fall down.

The acoustics are famous here. Until very recently the operas were performed without microphones. We got to listen to the workmen's conversations and hammering as they dismantled some of the hardware on the stage. It was not particularly musical.

Really, I've said this so often, the Romans were extraordinary builders.

We walked along the pedestrianised main street past all the high end fashion outlets staffed by the bored and the beautiful. Verona main square was damply impressive.

We walked the streets which are dotted with sculptures.  Lyn met this particular gentleman of Verona outside the library.

The weather promises to be no better tomorrow. It certainly won't be "fair Verona".