TREVISO AND UTRECHT.

Canal life.

Then after ten days, we’re on the road again, or bus and train. We’re staying a night in Treviso to get a cheap flight to The Netherlands. Treviso is a town outside Venice where the rich Renaiisance Venetians had their second villas where it was cooler. It’s a mini Venice with crystal clear shallow fast flowing canals with water reeds like mermaid hair rippling in the currents. And there are old windmills still in use.

As we’re walking into the centre, we hang over the bridge looking into the water and we see a strange furry animal floating backwards and obviously feasting on some tasty morsels in the canal. Is it an otter, a beaver or a large rat? We are intrigued. We get suggestions of it being a muskrat or a coypoi. Today we still don’t know but it was so cute and had a house beneath the bridge.

Then we discovered the old town with it’s medieval frescoes and water wheels, it’s beautiful canals and old pharmacies.

I go and see an exhibition of Paris Bordone, a pupil of the famous Titian and then we’re off for a drink at a cute bar on the canal and then off to dinner for stuffed pumpkin flowers with a truffle cream sauce.

UTRECHT

We take the plane to Utrecht via Eindhoven and from there we need to take the train but halfway on the journe, the train stops for ages and then we hear an announcement in Flemish and everyone starts to look worried. Luckily we find an English speaking person who tells us that we have to change trains at the next stop. We have five minutes to run to catch the next one and just make it as the doors close, glad I was with the daughter otherwise I don’t know where I would have ended up.

The hotel is modern and cool and we immediately walk into the town. It’s a sunny autumnal day and the canals are unrippled and reflections are perfect. There are bikes everywhere and I have to acclimatise to not walking on the bike path and getting knocked over. The shops along the canal are quirky, vintage and record stores are big here as are designer boutiques and cute cafes.

We are starving and our first stop is for the famous chips. There are small shop fronts selling only chips. We line up and order them with truffle mayonnaise and they are amazing, even though I’m not a chip person. The daughter has brought us here because last time they came, they discovered a lot of Asian restaurants. That night we had Balinese!

Next day we split up and I discovered the beautiful old building fronts, incredible doors and lamps, cheese shops with colourful cheese, red, orange and green, ducks aplenty on the rippled mosaic patterns on the canals, beautiful leadlights in old pubs, chocolate and beer shops aplenty as were interesting antique shops. All in all, such a different place to others I’ve been to in my travels. Pickles abound here! In the supermarket, shelf after shelf are filled with pickled vegetables. The canals are still again as I walk, beautiful thin tall houses reflected, geraniums spilling out of baskets along the bridges. Poke bowl and Thai that evening in a restaurant down near the water where the wharves used to be.

Next day we find a market and having the famous stroop waffels. We watch as a man cuts the dough, presses it thinly and fills it with caramel, served in a red and white checked paper sleeve, still warm.

There are fish and vegetable stalls with smoked garlic being plentiful.

Miffy is big here, there’s a museum as well but the highlight of the city is the Miffy red traffic light at a rainbow coloured cross walk. We have Vietnamese for lunch and I enjoy my first taste of coriander.

The buildings are beautiful, modern married with old. Later that night it's cocktails and more Asian food. Life is good.

Auronzo.

Funghi foraging.

The next day was a long hot walk to the station, train to Venice, bus to Tai, taxi home to a very different Auronzo, one with the first trailing of snow high up in the mountains and a temperature of 13, compared to 30 in Modena.

And here autumn has arrived. The apples are falling from the trees, tiny and sweet; restaurants have gone back to their three day a week winter hibernation; chill is in the air. I’m reluctant to get out my winter clothes as I was hoping to enjoy my autumn wardrobe but after two days, I get out the jumpers, pants and coats. And I make apple cakes and apple strudel from organic, just picked apples.

We walk in the afternoons on the hillside above our house as it gets the late sun. We find a walnut tree and tiny sweet plums, big bright orange pumpkins hiding in their green leaf finery growing on a pile of manure near the farm with it’s big cows and meadows of crocus.

The lake is so many incredible shades of turquoise and some days a milky jade, the mountains delineated by the autumn light. I find different varieties of mushrooms alongside the lake. Fires are starting, wood piles are being protected from the coming snow. Gardens are being stripped of the last of the vegetables. We walk past Claudia’s garden (she must be over 80 but still digging, weeding and foraging) and she gives us some kale and a big beautiful purple onion and a recipe for soup which we duly make the next day. A simple soup - onions, garlic, pancetta and kale and big hunks of toasted bread drizzled with oil and rubbed with garlic. It’s warming and hearty.

The apple trees near our house are laden with apples of different varieties, the tiniest ones fall to the ground perfect and I collect then to make an apple cake. I walk along the lakeside to find all different sorts of funghi and I wish I knew if they were edible or not. Evidently my late husband’s father was an expert funghi gatherer but we never came in the autumn to follow and learn.

In the Jerusalem artichoke field next door is a family of deer that seem to hide within the high plants. Evidently the females stay with the babies in a group, whereas the males are loners. When we speak to a neighbour about it, they say they may be coming close to the town because wolves are back in the mountains. They have returned from being over hunted and there’s been sightings of dead deer. Every time someone sees them from outside their windows, there is a shout. They are so cute.

And then we are invited on a funghi hunt by our cousin downstairs. The excitement is real. We drive up into the mountains and walk for about twenty minutes deep into the quiet forest where the trees are just starting the journey to colour and then loss of their leaves and into an area known for finferli or chiodini. We have a basket each and she shows us what to look for hidden under the foliage, under rock outcrops and slowly we become attune to where they like to grow. Such excitement! To our right, the mountainside drops into a deep valley that overlooks the high mountain peaks, starting to be draped in clouds. We find so many amongst the pine needles and then as it starts to sprinkle we head back down with our baskets, slithering down slopes and dragging ourselves up creek beds to our families property down below and our cousin shouts out to tell us she’s found a late porcini! More amazement as we then discover where they like to grow and find more! We also find a large umbrella mushroom which is edible.

We take our haul home as they light begins to fade and we’re taught how to clean the chiodini and what a job that is, the three of us picking through them and washing them in three different lots of water and then putting them in a pan to bring to the boil and cook for 20 mins. Then you make a sauce by sauteeing them in olive oil, garlic and parsley and serving them with polenta or with pasta. We have them both ways! And then we saute the porcini in butter and garlic and have them with tagliatelle. We have a mushroom feast and there are more to freeze and more to eat tomorrow. And the next night I cook the umbrella mushrooms, flattening it out and coating it in breadcrumbs and frying it. Divine. This mushroom foraging has to be the highlight of the year.

MODENA.

Incident of the wrong booking!

Then we end our Sardinian holiday, flying back to Modena for another birthday celebration. A lot of Virgos in our bunch of girls. We arrive late at night and walk from the bus stop for 20 minutes to get to our hotel, one of those new varieties where you let yourself in. I have all the codes but nothing works. I hand my phone to the daughter to double check and she finds out I’ve booked the wrong 2 nights! Never, ever have I done this. We are standing in the street at 10.00 at night in a town that is always booked out and we’re all in shock and then survival kicks in. We look on Booking.com to find that another apartment in this place is available and we contact the owner who speaks hardly any English and the daughter manages to convey our problem and he says we can stay there even though it’s not set up for three. We don’t care. It’s a miracle but we’re all a bit anxious by then and it takes a while to settle down to sleep.

We have booked at a famous Modenese restaurant, Franchescetta 58. We pass the beautiful coloured buildings, saffron, rust, tomatored, salmon, lobster, pistachio greens. Such an elegant town. Past the beautiful church to the restaurant. Starting with different breads, focaccia and a turmeric polenta thin crisp and flavoured grissini; then a tiny thin eggplant grilled whole with goats cheese and melon in paprika (which was questionable); very thin pancetta and apple mostarda; then a zucchini with prosciutto with a herb sauce; pasta with cacciatore sauce but without any chicken (disappointing); grilled fish with a roasted tomato on the side, (again not that exciting); a tiny creme caramel which isn’t very Italian: but then came a zuppa Inglese with a chocolate ganache which they served with a local liquor and then some roasted caramelised almonds and a chocolate and biscuit slice which made up for a lot. I have to say it was a bit disappointing but the Albanian waitress who looked after us made up for the strange food combinations. She was wonderful, quirky and put a candle on the dessert and sang Happy Birthday .

Stuffed, we wandered back into the city where we had to move to the room that I originally booked one day too late and this again wasn’t made for three. As the bathroom had glass doors and was next to the bed. Most peculiar if you’re staying with three friends, or maybe I’m just prudish.

By eight we were peckish, finishing the night with a ratatouille and one of the Modena famous soft gelato (kept at a temperature that gives it the most flavour) and running into a friend of my daughter's from her University year here in 2019.

And then it's back home for us for a while.