The Dolomites and Venice revisited - early winter

Israel came to visit last week. There were two "projects" on the agenda (aside from having fun together which is always on the agenda...): checking out ski resorts in the Dolomites and visiting Venice. A mini project was to see the leaves turning colors on the trees. It's just the right time and we were lucky to get a spectacular view of the trees - some green, some yellow and some bright orange. The mountains were already sprinkled with snow which looked like powdered sugar. The weather was great (if a bit on the cool side) in the mountains. It rained heavily in Venice the first day but stopped finally in the next.

We set out from Milan towards midday which was a bit of a late start. We stopped briefly in Trento on the way for a late lunch and continued on to Val Gardena. It was pitch black by the time we got there (around seven in the evening) only to discover that the beginning of Nov. is very much off-season over there and practically everything (!) is closed, including hotels and restaurants. We drove the length of the valley - Ortisei, St. Cristina and Selva - nothing. We were turning back, thinking to drive to Bolzano when Israel spotted a place that looked open. It was, they had room for us and we were very happy about it (especially me...). For dinner we had a pizza in the Pizzeria Tennis which was nice.The breakfast they served at the hotel was nice, especially the doughnuts which were superb (and got us thinking about the origin of sufganiot and how this European treat turned into something to commemorate the victory of the Maccabim over the Greek...).

We woke up to a glorious day. Clear, sunny and cold. The mountains already had a sprinkling of snow on them and the trees were busy changing colors and shedding their leaves. Israel was busy taking pictures of the outdoor system they have there and in other places in the area for ordering hotel rooms. They display all the hotels on a kind of board with a map beside and a telephone to call the place of your choice. The telephone actually works (we tried a similar system in Cortina D'Ampezzo later on in the day) and there's paper if you want to print out the name of the hotel. Israel said that in Israel a system like this wouldn't last very long without being vandalized and there wouldn't actually be paper inside for people to use.

We drove through the mountains from the villages of Val Gardena to Arabba and from there through a pretty mountain pass - Pocol, stopping there for a short hike and lunch, and then continuing on to Cortina D'Ampezzo. I think I'll just let the pictures talk for themselves so you can see some of the beauty of these gorgeous mountains, which were recently proclaimed World Heritage mountains (to be more precise the whole area was proclaimed a World Heritage Site):

Notice how the dolomitic limestone juts out from the more gentle hills below or in the words of UNESCO in their explanation of their choice of this site: "The quantity and concentration of extremely varied limestone formations is extraordinary in a global context, including peaks, towers, pinnacles and some of the highest vertical rock walls in the world". Notice also the blue skies...

This is Pocol, where we went for a short hike to stretch our legs, check out the ski slopes and have some nice minestrone soup. So you believe me that we actually got out of the car and walked here are two pictures of us over there:

In the ski department project Israel was convinced that the place would offer some very good skiing with magnificent views. What we did not find was a "ski in ski out" kind of place. It seems that one needs to travel or walk relatively long distances to get to where the skiing slopes start and that they are quite dispersed. If you know otherwise - please enlighten me.

What about the trees that I mentioned? Well, here they are in all their fall/autumn glory:

Notice how some of the trees remain green whereas others that seem like evergreens turn colors.

At some point as we driving out of Cortina D'ampezzo the next day we stopped dead in our tracks when we saw this tree:

Israel liked the effect created by the tree and the church in the background:

We spent the night in Cortina D'Ampezzo which I understand is every upscale ski resort. We stayed at the Hotel Meuble Oasi. Very cosy and comfortable with a nice breakfast, enough light in the room (I always remember my father trying to read with 20Watt bulbs in Swiss hotels and wondering what would happen if he would replace the 20Watt bulb with a stronger one - would the whole electricity system collapse??) and a decent shower (i.e. good water force). We had dinner in a nice bar that Israel chose (which seemed to be the hangout for Cortina men).

The next day we drove to Venice. It started to rain as we were driving along the highway. It was more or less pouring by the time we got to the city. I've never been to Venice in the rain. There is a certain beauty to the city also when it rains. Because of the rain we had a chance to see it when the "acqua alta" (literally "high water") set in:

Israel took some nice pictures of the gondolas - with and without people and also a picture of a workshop for the building of Gondolas:

We stayed in the Locanda Casa Petrarca. A very basic room (like a dorm room) but clean with a big bed. The breakfast they served was really bad - cold, bitter coffee, croissants wrapped in cellophane and tasteless toast. It's better not to take their breakfast, if possible, and to go Instead to a caffe nearby. We went to the Caffe del Doge and had a lovely breakfast there. This is the view from the window of our room:

Mostly, we wandered around the city. Here are some pictures of Piazza San Marco (notice the seagull preparing to "land" in the square), canals, the mountains away in the distance (covered with snow which fell at night) and a windowsill:




and some pictures of us in Venice (the one in the bottom left side is me freezing and getting wet in the porch of the Guggenheim museum):



A cute intercom in Venice:

and to end the post some ducks (and a goose...), this time from a small pond in a park in Trento:

Mt. Blanc, some other mountains and lots of water - summer vacation

In my travel magazine they ask the people they interview what kind of people are they - mountain, ocean, desert or jungle people. I'm definitely a mountain person and so, I'm discovering, is Israel. I feel happiest when there are mountains around me. Israel likes to climb mountains, the higher the better, on foot or even better if there's a scary narrow road leading up to the top and I'm driving...

So we took ourselves to the mountains. Our destination this summer was the Tour du Mont Blanc or TMB for short. Israel had heard from a friend that this is a route worth taking and so we set on trying to walk it. The Tour circuits the Mt. Blanc massif passing through France, Italy and Switzerland in the process. According to the web sites and book describing the Tour the trip takes 12 days. Crazy people running the route do it in two days (it's called the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc sponsored by the North Face) but the more normal people, like us, would probably need 3 weeks to manage it. I say probably because in the end we didn't have enough time to walk the whole tour and so settled for a taste of things to come (because we are definitely returning for another go when we will have more time).

The Tour is formidable. A lot of steep climbing and descending each day. As Israel said, it redefines the issue of heights and hiking... However, I think that with good equipment (which we had, thanks to Israel's careful planning and instructing), previous physical preparations and correctly paced walking the tour is doable. The views are incredibly rewarding and there aren't enough adjectives to describe the beauty and majesty of the mountains, the villages and the surroundings.

I'm going to try and describe what we did and where we went. I've got so many lovely pictures to choose from (Israel left me all 500 of them...). It's not going to be easy but here goes...

We set out from Milan by car. They say the best thing about Milan is that it's close to nice places. Now ain't that the truth... We arrived at Courmayeur in the afternoon, had a piadina (see left) and continued on to France planning to go through the Mt. Blanc Tunnel (no other way to go, up the mountain is not an option in this case). We were greeted by a sign announcing that there will be a one hour wait to go through the tunnel. We figured, it must be the holidays causing the traffic jam but then as we crawled forward we discovered that the reason is probably more mundane and reminiscent of the definitions of heaven and hell in Europe:

Heaven is Where

The Police are British,
The Chefs are French,
The Mechanics are German,
The Lovers are Italian
and
It’s all organized by the Swiss.

Hell is Where
The Police are German,
The Chefs are British,
The Mechanics are French,
The Lovers are Swiss
and
It’s all organized by the Italians.

To pacify the irritable crowds they were giving out bottles of water and charging a scandalous price of 41 euros (!) to go back and forth through the tunnel. Why scandalous? The Swiss charge 40 Swiss Francs to use all their highways and tunnels for a year but the Italians and French charge 41 euros just to go back and forth through the tunnel once and you stand on line for an hour for the pleasure. We emerged on the French side where there were no lines. No lines coming back through the S. Gottardo Tunnel in Switzerland on the way back either, smooth as butter (although there were was a very long line going in the other direction).

We ended up in Les Houches (riddle of the post - how do you pronounce the name of this place correctly?! We struggled for 2 days before finally figuring out how to pronounce it properly...) a small, pretty village a few km from Chamonix. This is the traditional place for starting the TMB (I'm not sure why, maybe because the climbs on the first two days from there are a bit easier). We stayed in a nice hotel there Hotel du Bois.

To get into the climbing mode we decided to hike up to the Pyramides of Les Bossons Glacier between Chamonix and Les Houches before starting on the TMB. This was a slightly crazy idea because we ended up climbing more than 800 m. in a few hours on our first day of walking... But how beautiful! Here are some pictures:

The view of the mountain near the glacier kept changing as the clouds drifted in and out.

This is what we looked like climbing there:




The smiles probably indicate that we liked the views and were having fun but also that we were a bit nutty doing this climb on the first day...


We took the chair lifts part of the way down (see above) during which Israel told me that it can't be that we climbed "only" 600 m. It ended up that he was correct. We "did" more than 800 m. (and lived to tell about it...).

and this is the sleep of the just a few hours later:


The next day we started walking the TMB in the traditional anti clockwise direction. We set out confidently expecting to turn left onto the route (as indicated in the book) but seeing instead clear signs pointing in the other direction...


It was so confusing we decided to go to the tourist information nearby and ask. The sour faced lady there said "You should go left". We asked "So why does the sign point in the other direction?!". She shrugged in a what-do-you-want-from-me-I-only-work-here kind of way. So we went left in the end...

The climb was not easy:


But the mountains were so very very pretty:


We reached Col de Voza in the early afternoon and sat down for a well deserved lunch:

Turns out you can have donkeys or mules carry your stuff while you walk

We spent the night in a refuge called Gite du Champel. This is what one sees from the window when one wakes up in the morning:

and this is where we ate breakfast over there:


During the walks we saw so much water - trickling down from the mountains, rushing through the valleys, everywhere so much water. If we could have just a little bit of all this water in Israel...



and lovely flowers and butterflies:


Our third day ended in the pretty village of Les Contamines. The name of the place doesn't mean what you might think it means, i.e. a contaminted place. Rather, the name of the village originates, according to wikipedia, from ancient local dialect. The word “Contamines” , derived from Latin condominium through condaminium, once meant ploughable land on the squires estate. The village is well cared for. Especially nice are the pots of flowers everywhere:


We stayed at the very pleasant hotel Le Christiania. It's a family business and the good restaurant on the ground floor is run by the daughter who lives nearby.

On the second morning in Les Contamines we woke up to find a market in the main street of the village. We bought ourselves a nice lunch - French cheeses, some berries, tomatoes and the inevitable baguette (one does not see a French person without one tucked under his/her arm) and walked along a river to the Notre-Dame-de-la-Gorge Church. There we had a small picnic:


What do you think about my divine hat? So wonderfully French... I could go with it to the Ascot races or something... We found it in the market in Les Contamines and Israel bought it for me...




The next day we travelled (by car) to Switzerland. We spent the night in a village near Sion - Haute Nendaz in the Valais. Why there, you wonder? For old times sake. Many years ago when I was about 7 my parents took us there after the time we spent in Holland. It was our first trip abroad in which we didn't go to be with relatives. I remember being incredibly happy to see mountains again when we got there after Holland which is completely flat (except for some tiny dunes near the coast). The place is rather empty in the summer but seems to be an active ski resort in the winter. The views were wonderful there, too (as you can see in the picture).

We took the road up to the top of the mountain there trying to find a nice place for a picnic. The problem was that I was STARVING (and those who know me well know what this means..). So at some point we just stopped on the side of the road (maybe one car passed by the whole time we were eating) and ate our food. I was a bit... don't know what exactly, and this is the result:

In the morning we travelled north towards Zurich. We went through the Grimsel pass:


The pass is a heaven for bikers (both bicycles and motorbikes). One of them, (see below on the left) who climbed all the way up from Meiringen on his bike (1,500 m. height gain!), took our picture:

(was it cold? yes, it was! It's Israel who doesn't suffer from the cold... but then you think, I'm outnumbered, the other guy is also wearing shorts, but he has mitigating circumstances, he just climbed a mountain).

We continued from the pass down to the valley and then up a scenic road near Meiringen leading to the Reichenbach Falls. The falls, which drop down 250 m., impressed Sir Arthur Conen Doyle so much that he staged the mighty battle between Sherlock Holmes and and his archenemy, Prof. Moriarty, over there. Initially, they both died when they fell but later on, due to pressure from fans, Sherlock Holmes appeared to have survived by hanging on to a ledge and went on to solve more mysteries. Here are two pictures of the falls:




and these are of us over there (beautiful place to have coffee nearby):

The narrow road continues on up to Schwarzwaldalp, which like many other mountains in Switzerland, it and its surroundings are wonderful, beautiful, choose your adjective... See for yourself:

(the picture opening the post is also from there)


In Zurich we met my parents. While there we paid a visit to the Sprungli chocolate store along the Bahnhofstrasse. As far as I'm concerned they (with Lindt) make some of the best chocolate that one can ever hope to eat... Do yourself a favor and if you're in Zurich go there. The chocolates are worth every penny you pay for them, have some coffee, and try their vanilla ice-cream. It's the real thing...


To end this (very long...) post some ducks, this time the healthy inhabitants of the Zurichsee:

Shana Tova to all... and happy travelling