Trip 3: Alleghe

So back to Alleghe, Italy, which I adored from the first minute despite its lack of printing facilities. There's just something about ranges like the Alps and the Dolomites that I can't get enough of. I think must be the juxtaposition of abundant green against dramatic mountains. We have dramatic mountains in California, but the landscape tends to be pretty dry. The time I've spent in southern Germany, the French Alps, and the Dolomites, however, have convinced me that this type of landscape might be my favorite. Add to the verdant, wildflower dotted meadows and rugged peaks neat, wooden houses with windowboxes overflowing with red, pink, and white geraniums, and honest-to-god goats/cows with bells around their necks, and...wow. 

Alleghe from the opposite side of the lake

I don't actually have too many details to share about our time there because very little happened. I went running three times, read four books (great ones - look for Legit Lit posts about them soon), drank too many cappuccinos to count, and napped every day. I also walked around the town and the lake and the days slipped by very quickly. There was a really great pizzeria very near the apartment that we'd rented, and I enjoyed looking in the souvenir shops, though I didn't buy much. Prices in Europe are funny. We paid endless tolls on the road from France to Alleghe and gas was very expensive, but we bought bags of fresh bread every day from the local bakery for about two Euros and a glass of very tolerable wine from the pizzeria was only one Euro. I had always associated siestas with Spain, but apparently it's a pretty sacred time in at least some parts of Italy, too. The grocery store was open for a few hours in the morning, then shut from noon until 4:00, when it would reopen until 7:00. Most shops in the town were closed in the afternoons, though of course the restaurants and cafes stayed open so we could be sure of access to cappuccinos, macchiatos, and the like.

We spent so much time at the bar that offered free wifi, which I mentioned in my last post, that we became quite friendly with the waitress who had seemed pretty frosty at first. Ed went without me once and ordered lasagna and a cappuccino, and apparently she gave him quite a tongue lashing in broken English about the lunacy of this combination and bullied him into ordering wine instead. When he ordered a second glass a while later, apparently she did a victory dance and chanted, "I win! I win!"

A nearby town

We saw a poster for a fireworks show one night, and excitedly hurried to the other side of the lake where we hoped to have a view of both the fireworks and the town. Alas, our poor Italian meant that we had made a grave error: The time on the poster did not correspond with the beginning of the fireworks. It indicated the start of a series of speeches which preceded the fireworks. I asked Ed, who speaks more Italian than the rest of us put together (which is not saying a whole lot), if he could understand anything. He was able to translate words like "very," "day," "happy," and "town." Hmph. Let me tell you, Italians can talk. This guy went on for about 20 minutes, then passed the microphone to someone else who gave us another 20 minutes of the same thing. Eventually, we saw a series of lit up boats drifting across the lake, but they were too far away for us to really tell what was going on. Later, we learned that this boat parade is actually a competition, and this year's winner had decorated his boat in a Hansel and Gretel theme, reconstructing the gingerbread house with all the trimmings. After an hour and a half of shivering along a wooden fence inhabited by unsettlingly large spiders, the show began at last. It really was gorgeous, and was absolutely worth the wait. (I say that only because the spiders claimed no casualties.) We listened to gorgeous classical music and watched the colored lights explode overhead, mirrored perfectly in the lake below.

We arranged to spend one of our last nights in Italy staying in a mountaintop refugio. A refugio is something like a cabin, a restaurant, and a youth hostel in one. They are all over the mountains in Italy, and exist so that hikers can go on multi-day hikes without having to worry about bringing much food or sleeping gear. You show up, pay your fee, and get a hot dinner, a continental-style breakfast, and a bed. There are also showers available for an additional fee. 

The view from the balcony of our apartment with the tram in the background

On the appointed day, six of the seven of us took the tram up several thousand feet and hiked at a leisurely pace (well, most of us. Eliot "hikes" like he is driven by an engine) for a few hours. The countryside was beautiful and green for a while, then turned into dust and rocks as we got higher. We stopped at a small lake populated by small fish that nibbled pretty aggressively at our toes when we waded in, causing much giggling and squirming among our ranks. There are spas that employ fish to do similar work; apparently it's a great way to eliminate dead skin. After our pedicures, we continued climbing.

Trail through the peaks

 We reached the refugio, got settled into our rooms - Daryl and Phil shared with other hikers, and Eliot, Ethel, Ed, and I shared a tiny room with two sets of bunk beds - and changed for dinner. This was less because we were concerned about manners and more because at that elevation, it gets very cold very fast as the sun begins to set. We enjoyed a round of beers and penciled our dinner orders onto a sheet, and eventually we were served salad, soup, and bread, a pasta course, and polenta with either meat ragu or cheese. Apparently most refugios are family-run operations; people just move up there with their kids in tow and live there for the season. There were several kids helping out who looked to be in their late teens or early 20's, and a toddler ran around the kitchen and dining room throughout the evening and the following morning. All told, there seemed to be over 30 guests in attendance, all speaking a dizzying mix of languages. It was a large crowd for a small facility, and seemed even bigger as the lines for the bathroom and sinks started to form after dinner. Ed slept like the dead, apparently, but Ethel and I had trouble drifting off. The wind was fierce, and it sounded as though it was going to blow the tin roof off the place. Also, the bunks, ladders, and floor were all made of very creaky wood that made a huge racket if you so much as set foot on a board or turned over in bed; I'd spend whole minutes debating whether or not adjusting my position to make myself more comfortable was worth disturbing my roommates. I decided that the sleeping conditions and food would both have seemed like quite a treat if I was exhausted from hiking all day, but after only a few hours on the trail I was more critical.

View from just outside the refugio

In the morning, Ed and I hiked off before the others in order to meet a friend of his who would be passing through Alleghe to join us for lunch. It was peaceful and lovely, and I particularly enjoyed looking down on the lake and town from different vantage points along the way, though it's hard to really feel a sense of accomplishment when you've ridden a tram most of the way up.

Looking down on Alleghe and the lake

That was my last night in Alleghe, and Ed and I celebrated by going to a nice restaurant in a hotel right on the lake, where we enjoyed a wonderful dinner on the balcony with a water view. He drove me to the Venice airport the next day, then headed back to Alleghe. I had to get back to work, but he, Eliot, and Ethel planned to spend a few days in Amsterdam, then head to Belgium to watch the Grand Prix.

This was one of the most relaxing vacations I can remember taking. Generally trips to Europe are anything but, as one rushes from place to place to try to fill every second with sightseeing. I enjoy both kinds of trips, but the New Yorker in my found the lazy days in the countryside to be a nice alternative to more time spent in cities.