We’re back for a few days to sort out our visa. And what a kafuffle that is. Luckily the daughter’s Italian has improved after a week’s course, we needed it. Mine was relatively straightforward as I was renewing it but the daughter’s working holiday visa had them confused as they’d never heard of it. The daughter argued her way through it and eventually he went to look it up and found it. He was lovely after that but we were holding our breaths and then he saw our surname and we became instant friends. Everyone here seems to love a Vecellio surname, this policemen knew about the famous Renaissance painter Titian and when we say we are linked with him, doors open. Then the daughter has to have her fingerprints taken but the wifi is down, so the police tell us to go and have a coffee and hopefully the internet will return, as it does. We are done, celebrations! They will call us to pick up our visas at some time, hopefully before we return home.
Then the daughter’s partner arrives and we celebrate with a home cooked meal and a Negroni. The next day we head up to the fossil museum Dolomythos again where we have a platter of local cured meats and cheeses. The church is beautiful, little gardens in front of the cemetery plots, all carefully tended. Then we come upon a singing event with groups of women singing and dressed in traditional costumes with stalls selling beer and sausages. There is an Austrian feeling in the air as it’s on the border, the town having an Italian name and an Austrian one, San Candido and Innichen.
And then we’re off again, leaving the girls behind to catch up.
LAGO DI GARDA - SIRMIONE
We arrive at La Casa di Marla in Sirmione, on Lago di Garda and what a character Marla is! She has a beautiful rustic old stone house, one of the few remaining ones in the area. She is a retired zookeeper, covered in tattoos and running her B&B with flair. Our rooms are beautiful, lace and interesting antiques cover the walls and when we open the shutters, four lots of swallows nests are perched in beams in the courtyard. We watch them come and go, it becomes our afternoon activity after a day out.
We head off to dinner in the heat and find Vecchio Mulino, a restaurant set in an old mill on the shores of the lake at Peschiera del Garda. I have a Limoncello spritz and they bring us a small loaf of bread, the recipe of which dates back to the 1800’s, the flour being milled here. In the 19th century, bread in this region was considered a luxury and only used for Christian holidays. The bread is amazing and served with the nutty green olive oil, the fritto misto is great as is the theatrical production of the creme brulee. But the head waiter made the evening for us, welcoming and professional, he had worked in restaurants in Sydney for three years and knew more about our politics than most Australians.
We head back to a mattress situation - there are two like the Princess and the Pea situation and the second one doesn’t fit the bed, in fact it hangs over the sides and you end up on a slant in the middle of the night or worse, hanging off the edge, so we drag it off and prop it up on the wall and finally sleep peacefully. The next day after breakfast in the beautiful dining room, we head off to Sirmione, which boasts a rare example of a medieval port fortification, the Scaligero Castle.
We pass the lemonade stall which I remember as being there at least twenty years ago.Then we enter via one of two drawbridges over the moat. The water is crystal clear, with ducks nesting on floating wooden platforms. The town is already full of impressed tourists, us included. We think about walking to the Grottoes of Catullus but it’s too hot so we end up taking a boat ride there which ended up being the perfect way to see the Roman villa built around the 1st century BC. It is one of the most exceptional finds of a Roman villa in northern Italy. It’s magnificent and the best way to see it in the heat.
Then we have a perfect lunch - stuffed squid in a fava bean sauce which was delicious and stuffed zucchini flowers with a capsicum sauce and then back home to watch the swallows feeding their young and doing their swirling dances under the eaves.
That night we went to Desenzano del Garda where we ate seafood pasta and marvelled at the slow descent of night here, the pale salmon and pink colours on the horizon of blue.
Next day we go to the Parco Giardino Sigurta, a beautiful garden with questionable plastic sculptures throughout, made with recycled plastic but still a shock in this ancient garden setting. Again it’s suggested we get a golf buggy to go around as it is a huge acreage and having just read about the dangers of these vehicles, I’m not keen but then I decide to give it a go and at the speed we’re going, I think we’re safe.
From there, we go to Borghetto sul Mincio, one of the prettiest villages in Italy we’re told by our ex zookeeper and she is right. It’s a beautiful little hamlet on a river that is crystal clear and full of water mills, where flour used to be ground. We find a restaurant right on the Mincio river and have amazing homemade rolls and wholemeal grissini flavoured with fennel and while waiting for our food, I spy an azure blue dragon-fly and then others, flitting in and around the water.
The food is good, I have an asparagus torte which is delicate and served on a frothy parmesan sauce, then we have stracciatella with prawns with beautiful spicy olive oil and a brulee flavoured with lavender.
And then we’re in Lazise for dinner later that night, for a Limoncello spritz that arrives with so much free food! The town is surrounded by medieval fortress walls but we’re too tired to wander too much.
We stumble upon a restaurant that specialises in mussels and we’re in. The very beautiful hostess finds us a seat and her young son, probably aged nine or ten, very proudly escorts us to our seats, speaking English. This place is great, we’re given a bib (for the messy sport of eating mussels) and a menu that is like a newspaper and we order the fried mussels with a garlic sauce and then a huge bowl of them with different sauces, even a gorgonzola one. Replete and exhausted, we head home.
The next morning, we say our goodbyes to Marla and we compare our tattoos. She wins!
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