ENGLAND - London.

We arrive post Coronation, settling into a not so great hotel in Westminster supposedly close to everything but we end up taking Bolt taxis that are fairly cheap and friendly because it's further out from the centre than we thought. We find a lovely old pub for a drink before heading into the centre.

We’ve booked for a dinner at the Bentley Oyster bar, dating back to 1916. Everyone is friendly and we have the fish pie and fish and chips with a witlof, radicchio and pomegranate refreshing salad.  It’s beyond extravagant but sometimes you just have to.  

We’re off to the National Gallery and the city is heavily strung out with flags and weird cutouts of Charles and Camilla. We see an amazing Post Impressionist exhibition and a large amount of Titian’s paintings ending with an excellent piccolo and finishing at the Garrick Arms pub in Soho for a hearty fry up as only the British can do.  Fried chicken, fried camembert and of course, the obligatory side of chips. It’s freezing and windy and we see Julia Gillard, our ex PM, rounding a corner. 

Next day we go to the Tate for the Rossetis exhibition which, if you’re a Pre-Raphaelite fan as I am, you’d be blown away with the amount of paintings and poetry in one location. The Pre-raphaelites were a group of painters, poets and fabric designers in the 1850’s. The women who were muses, poets and painters are also included in this wonderful exhibition.We also see the huge amount of works by Turner and I fall in love with the small tiny paintings he did whilst travelling around Europe. 

We change hotels for a night, so much better and with such lovely people running it compared to the other one and that night I go to Chelsea and discover the Ivy restaurants. Amazing. It’s only early but there’s only space at the bar and there I met a wonderfully eccentric woman and her equally eccentric friend.  The first woman had a dance company that she ran and had just completed a month dancing herself on Wicked. The friend who came later was also into dance.  She was organising some sort of performance at Buckingham Palace and asked me if I was in London tomorrow and if so, I must come!

I would be moving on but I was overwhelmed how they embraced me. I also fell in love with the bathroom! The whole place was amazing, like a quirky English parlour, full of colour, wallpaper, frames and velvet chairs. 

Lago di Braies and Pieve.

We return to a full moon over the mountain, the steeple of the bell tower glowing in the moonlight. Next day, we take advantage of the car and go to Lago di Braies. The skies are blue, the fields are coloured with dandelions, the lake itself is lower by one third. There’s a beach now where there were boats and water.  They’re worried that the glazier that feeds it is drying up. 

We walk and check out the wildflowers and along the banks, just in view there are so many frogs mating. 

We wander back and talk to a guy who’s sitting, painting the little church.

Then we lunch overlooking the mountains. I have polenta with a ragu of mushrooms, it’s

so good but we wonder how long this lake will continue to exist if not fed by the melting snows.

We stop at Lago di Misurina and the lake is almost all unfrozen and yet the woman in the souvenir shop says the glazier here also is disappearing. Change is everywhere. 

Next day we head to Pieve, home town of Titian, the painter. We go to a small musesum there with Veneti (ancient Roman) artefacts that were found in Auronzo and after we have coffee at an interesting old taverna where you press a button in the wall for service and where the local men are standing, chatting and drinking an early glass of vino.

On the way back home we stop at a hostaria from the 1500's for a jerusalem artichoke gnocchi with smoked ricotta and a burnt butter sauce - interesting flavour.

We’re only here a couple of days and then we’re off to England, dropping off the hire car, catching the bus, staying overnight in Mestre, eating Chinese for lunch and dinner as there is a dearth of Asian food up in the Dolomites and then we’re off.

THE DOLOMITES.

Places to visit.

We settle back into the village life. 

The daughter forages and comes home with interesting greens. Dead nettle and dandelions which she makes into a pesto. We have nettle soup with foraged wild garlic. She makes a mead with dandelion flowers.

New spring flowers emerge every few days on our walk. They open the dam up and let the water downstream to towns that need more water as there has been a drought here. On the hillside blackthorn begins to flower and we all start to sneeze. The trees are starting to green up, the meadows start to sway with thousands of dandelions gathering in the sunshine. 

We watch with awe as an almost full moon lifts its curve over the mountains and the valley glows.

We take a trip to Trento via Bassano del Grappa and marvel at the ancient wooden bridge of Ponte degli Alpini spanning the river, dating back to 1569. It's been destroyed many times and rebuilt to the old specifications. 

In Trento we go to our favourite beer hall, Forsterbrau where I have Strangolapreti which translates to priest chokers that dates back to the Council of Trent in the 17th century when the clergymen would eat so much of this dish that they supposedly would choke. It’s a dumpling made of spinach, cheese and breadcrumbs, topped with melted butter and parmesan. 

Next day, we saw a sign for an underground museum and beneath the city is a whole Roman town with streets, sewerage systems, toilets, shops etc. Amazing! 

That afternoon we went for aperitivo at La Vie en Rose, our favourite bar where they serenade us with piano music and serve a great aperitivo and then we ate at Ristorante Pizzeria alla Grotta where they served huge meals and afterwards they took us down to the cellar that had been converted and which dated back to when it had an entrance to the main street but after many centuries it had been filled in. We wander back home over ammonite fossils and a Roman town underfoot. 

We have breakfast Italian style of ricotta croissants and a macchiato before we leave to go back home.