CORTINA.

Places to go in the Dolomites.

We drive to Cortina for a night, basically because we have a car! Without one, it’s difficult here and we are looking around for a second hand one. We drive up into the mountains and the snow begins to fall and we were heading for a lake further up but we see people turning around so we go straight to our hotel instead. 

Cortina is a famous ski town but it’s quiet out of season and affordable. We go to look at the church and a man is playing the organ, we think he might be having a breakdown. The music is spooky and dark and possibly driving the Christians to drink.

They have a basket of seeds that you can take to help with your mental health (which we do as our nervous system has been triggered by the weird music) and another basket of Holy Water.  We take a couple of those to make sure our health will not turn mental after the music. 

Then we lunch at a beer restaurant called Pontejel Forst and I have excellent beetroot casunziei (northern Italian ravioli) with burnt butter and poppy seeds and we order our favourite thinly shredded cabbage with caraway seeds, another regional speciality. 

On our journey around town we see a gondola on the roof of a very old building with a very strange elephant ironwork next to it that nobody seems to know the history of and some beautiful frescoes.

Then we go to a new hip bar called Zeldas which is tiny and empty.  We order their Tofana negroni with Savoia, Fragolino, gin and bitter chocolate, strangely good and it came with enough goodies to save on our dinner.

We visit another bar (there’s not a great deal to do here if you’re not a skier) Bar Dolomiti which is really old fashioned and serves up a traditional Negroni and more aperitivi.

Then no visit to Cortina is complete without visiting the Cooperativa, an old department store that has a great supermarket and 3 floors of anything you might need. There I become slightly obsessed with the butters, all dressed up and folded uniquely. I end up buying one that’s round. Will try when home. 

We decide to go back to our favourite restaurant where I order grilled treviso radicchio with a soft cheese and prosciutto which I have to say is hearty and interesting but wouldn’t order again. 

The next day we head home, the mountains dusted with more snow and excitingly, I have ordered some benches for outside the apartments (as the others were decrepit and had been there since I arrived in the late 80’s!) and they had arrived, all boxed up, ready to assemble and paint. Flowers for the planters next.  

AURONZO.

Back home.

We pick up a car for a month and head home, arriving on Easter Monday so no shops are open unlike in Australia. We drop off our bags, open all the shutters and survey our mountain.  Snow still hides deep in its crevices but there’s no snow in the village. Then we head down to a La Fenice restaurant for mountain food. We read that it opens at 7 but that’s only for drinks, food is served after 7.30 so of course, we drink. I have potatoes and a cheese that they fry here in slabs and finally sliced cabbage with caraway seeds. 

Next day I head to a bigger supermarket out of town and return with a large box of strawberries for $6.00 and that afternoon it snows! We watch it through the windows, full of youthful excitement even though there’s not much.  

Next day we’re off to get a Magic Bullet, even farther afield and return and eat at an old hostaria - Serenissima, dating back to 1360 where there specialty is radicchio di montagna, a root vegetable that comes up just after the snows begin to melt but when we ask the waitress she tells us it’s a type of potato so we don’t try it. Next time we will.  I have local cheeses and apple and a plum jam, the daughter has the lightest gnocchi in a cream sauce with pancetta that was amazing. Where we go to buy electrical goods (about an hour away), there’s an even bigger supermarket and we return home laden with huge pumpkin flowers ready for stuffing and a huge bunch of agretti, a marsh green that we love.  

I cook up a huge plate of stuff pumpkin flowers and it snows again! Time for a huge negroni at our favourite bar that doesn’t seem to use any measuring implements and I get the giggles, all for $10 compared to 18-20 in Oz.  And you can take your dogs into cafes and restaurants!

Day after day, we find new wildflowers.  The crocuses are out by the lake, primroses are popping up, tiny violets hide low to the ground, blue forget-me-knots cluster, purple and indigo vetch (pea family) flutter in the breeze, weird alpine flowers emerge into the light.

We walk up to where they found the remains of a pagan temple of Venetic origins and on the way I see a tiny cross on the ground and show the daughter.  I walk on and she stops me, saying: Have you looked at this? I squint and it’s older than I thought, with a woman on one side with a crown of stars around her head and angels on either side. The other side has Jesus on the cross with a crown like a Pope. We try to find something similar but it’s rare to have a two sided cross. I think it’s Bronze and either Byzantine or Medieval. We’ve found something special.  Unfortunately the site itself is covered with plastic and a Christian cross stands by it now. They did find treasures there that are now in the local Museum, we will be visiting. On the way back I find wild daphne, the flowers here!

That morning the daughter goes down to the fish shop to buy mussels that come from Spain and also some lovely thick stems of asparagus. Dinner sorted. The fish store only opens for three days and mostly in the morning. I stay at home to repaint the daughter’s room as last year she requested a lovely green colour but for some reason it didn’t work, the light brought out the yellow in it and it was difficult to live with, it is now a lovely soft latte colour. It's hard work painting with lime wash so a reward is needed, we're off for - you guessed it - a Negroni.

That night the moon is just about to pop up over the mountain and the scene is like a watercolour painting with the church lights on - must be singing practice in the church.

TREVISO.

Gateway to Venice.

We’re back and I have strange in between worlds feelings, I don’t quite belong here but I also feel I don’t quite belong in Australia either.  It’s disquieting. We arrived in Dubai and found a quaint Lebanese cafe to wile away the couple of hours wait and then we arrived in Venice in the afternoon. 

We’re staying in Treviso, a fortified town on the outskirts of Venice, complete with several water wheels for milling grain. It has waterways like Venice and is so much quieter. 

Wandering the streets I come across a Roman mosaic underground that is fenced off and we find a Museum/deconsecrated church that features frescoes by Giovanni Bellini, the teacher of Titian whose painting also is there. Beneath there is a crypt that has pre christian mosaics as well. We walk upon history here, pagan temples that become christian churches.

It’s Easter and I notice as I pass sweet shops that there aren’t a great deal of Easter eggs and they’re mainly big ones that the family shares rather than small individual ones. We eat, drink and wander through churches, the bells ring, ducks float by on the shallow clear waterways, the water weeds swaying. 

We lunch at Trattoria dall’amelia and I have a traditional borlotti bean soup with fresh radicchio on the side which was slightly odd but tasty. 

Later that night we had aperitivo in the main square, the Piazza dei Signori, at a lovely old bar Beltrame and waited until the restaurants opened. We dined at da Pino pizzeria on a fantastic salad of crispy pears and parmesan and an asparagus pizza as it’s asparagus time here in Italy. 

Beautiful cafes with frescoed ceilings, people watching and leaning over bridges - watching the water is the thing to do here. Looking up and looking down in case you miss anything.

We people watch and wander and enjoy an Italian Easter.