Border towns

The local tourist information brochure helpfully reminds us that, ‘The chilly days of winter are just around the corner. It’s time for the Dolomite folk to ready their homes for the arrival of the harshest of seasons: time to chop, clean and stack up the logs for fireplaces and stoves; to prepare jams and preserves (such as that unforgettable quince jam our mothers used to make); to check the equipment for clearing the snow.’

Quince jam??!! Anyway, the good Dolomite folk have taken this advice to heart (at least the Cadore Dolomiti have) and everywhere there are neatly stacked piles of wood, usually beneath shuttered windowsills harbouring pots of geraniums for perfect photo opportunities!

Cortina d’Ampezzo is Italy’s most fashionable and expensive ski resort, which means it must be pretty damn flash! It is, with Ferraris and designer gear very much in evidence.

It is surrounded by stunning scenery and hosted a Winter Olympics – the wooden ski jump still stands looking like some weird hangover from a medieval jousting tournament.

While Him Outdoors goes for a run I get to explore Pieve di Cadore at my leisure. I have a cappuccino in a cheerful café on the square. I think everybody comes in to say hello to the owner and grab a quick coffee. Those who don’t, she nabs outside as she stands in the doorway for her frequent cigarette breaks.

The town is full of Titian memorabilia. He was born in Pieve di Cadore sometime between 1488 and 1490, but moved to Venice at the age of nine to become one of the most famous artists of his time. He still returned to his house in Pieve during the summer as it got too hot in Venice. His house is now a museum with copies of his works and lots of information in Italian.

As a true Renaissance man, Titian was also a timber merchant and the craftsmanship is evident in the house. Downstairs, the wooden floor is made from hexagonal slices of tree trunk.

An exterior staircase leads up the side of the house to the top floor where the furniture is displayed: high chairs; low stools; chests; shelves; sideboards and a dining table. A floor plan illustrates how level the house was – even without modern measuring equipment – but every crooked angle or wonky wall is accounted for, with cupboards built into every spare space.

The uneven floors and beams and heavy furniture make the house seem very dark, but I am impressed by the cornices on the ceilings and the fancy woodwork on the lintels and architraves – even when the basics weren’t in place, decoration was considered necessary.

Little saucers of ground-up pigment that Titian used in his paintings are displayed in a cabinet. The bright colours and evocative names (lapislazzuli; verde vescia; giallorino; lacca di cocciniglia; terra d’ombra; nerofumo) remind me of spices; although you wouldn’t want to cook with these powders, I guess painters mix them up to their own particular recipe.

The Archdiaconal Church of Saint Mary Nascent in Pieve is a gem – despite the long-winded name. The fresco on the choir was painted by Titian (or Tiziano Vecellio to give him his full name) and pupils.

The Last Supper above the altar also has parts painted by Titian, and he has created a self-portrait in the nativity scene where Mary is breast-feeding, which I imagine was quite a shocking subject for a painting, flanked by a bishop (with the face of Titian’s son) and St. Andrew (with his brother’s face). Mary herself is modelled on Titian’s daughter, Lavinia – keeping it all in the family.

I was admiring the 1450s pieta – a painted terracotta group reportedly by Egidio d’Alemagna – when I was startled by a grinning skull in a glass case underneath it. This is apparently a relic of St Fedele, brought (and doubtless bought) from Rome in 1767. Is this penchant for collecting bones a particularly Catholic thing? It seems quite macabre and unnecessarily idolatrous.

Lorenzago (or Popetown as we call it) is where Pope John Paul chose to spend his summer breaks – six of them – and his successor, Benedict XVI, followed his example in summer 2007. It is peaceful and the air is pure; old men sit at cafes and cats stretch in the morning sun.

The bells ring out loud and clear. They are electronically rung now and as you see them swinging in the rafters, they look like big kids on swings – competing to see who can go the highest and you are always worried one of them might spin right round and fall off.

We gather the glorious glossy fruit from the horse chestnut tree (terra d’ombra perhaps?) and play hacky conker with them. The trees and little villages are punctuated by the spires and (decreasingly as we move away from the border) onion-shaped domes.

At Calderada di Reno, our Best Western Meeting Hotel is like any airport hotel anywhere – soulless and functional. It is a place to sleep, although there is a demolition site next door. We can’t work out if Calderada is up and coming or down and going. A brief stroll through the town reveals that the house prices are still around the 200,000 Euro mark, so I would guess it’s the former, not that I’m planning on making an investment.

Walking in the Dolomites

Tre Cime

We wake up to snow on the hilltops. Him Outdoors is like a puppy dog who can’t wait to get his paws cold, so we eat a hearty breakfast of warm croissants and cappuccino and head off to the mountains.

Snow has made the roads impassable and some crafty Austro-Italian is charging twenty euro to get through a barrier, but that cannot deter the intrepid Him Outdoors. Pack on back, he is soon yomping up the road to the foot of the Tre Cime.

The footpaths are way too deep in snow for our insufficient summer hiking gear – trainers; tights and thermal tops – but the views are spectacular and the memory card gets another hammering.



There are various routes around and up the Tre Cime ‘world famous Dolomite peaks’ but we content ourselves with floundering about in the snow, walking up to a glorious little church, quite spiritual in its simplicity with a couple of world war graves blanketed in snow – it’s not the worst site for a final resting place.

Back down at Misurina Lake we walk a quick circuit admiring the reflections of the mountains in the calm surface. The guidebook states that ‘if you are looking for health, pure, fresh air, then this is the place for you.’

On the lakeshore is a prestigious clinic specialising in treating childhood asthma. It alleges that, ‘The climactic conditions of the area have proved to be extremely beneficial to asthma sufferers.’ I reckon that because the air is so thin at such altitude no-one can breathe properly anyway – I am certainly gasping for air as we march up the mountain – so everyone feels equally belaboured.

Just as we are leaving, a rally of Mercedes vehicles come through. They all pull up to the lake shore for a quick photo opportunity before heading over the pass to Austria.

Pian dei Boi

Our local guides informs us, ‘The last tepid rays of sunshine bring out the best and brightest in the warm shades of autumn. The woodlands are still glowing with the reds and yellows which the winter rainfall has not yet dampened down. There’s still time for a trip or two into the mountains, up to a moderate altitude. Just enough to admire nature slowly, gently drifting into a thoughtful, dreamlike state.’ So we do.

Pian dei Boi is apparently a ‘photographer’s paradise. The plateau lies at an altitude of 2000m amid cols, wide stretches of pastureland and woodland with beech, hazel, fir, larch and mungo pine, which in the autumn burst into a feast of colour.’ Indeed they do. I take photos of Dolomites all around but fear I might have peaked too early – I actually make that ‘joke’ aloud and Him Outdoors simply groans.

The drive up to the plateau is extremely hairy – very narrow and with massive drops, but it is incredibly beautiful with the autumn colours. We walk a massive circuit, which doesn’t go exactly the way Him Outdoors intends, and we end up tramping through freezing woods on a track that descends for ages before climbing back up to the plateau. The views really are stunning though.

There are lots of military reminders as well; barracks, forts and observatories used during the First World War when it was feared the Austrians might attack over the mountains.

The views are expansive and the scenery exquisite, but it is pretty extreme up there and you have to wonder whether anyone would really have gone to all that effort to get up there. Now the buildings are crumbling – as we stop by the barracks, bits of rock are just dropping off as they thaw out and expand.

The Dolomites are actually ancient coral reefs and are named for the French geologist, de Dolomieu, who was the first person to identify the composition of sedimentary limestone was formed from calcium carbonate and magnesium – or so says my tourist pamphlet.

It claims you can find marine fossils on the mountain tops, although I don’t think that is what Him Outdoors is searching for when he goes off for a run – I haven’t managed to exhaust him sufficiently it appears.

Coffee Culture in Italy

In a bustling café in Rimini men stand at the counter and knock back tiny cups of powerful caffeine – ristretto is ‘very short black coffee’ – shuddering as they swallow, almost as if it is a chore – so why do they do it? It costs more to sit down.

I ask for a latte and receive a glass of milk. If you ask for a caffe é latte, you also get a small jug of coffee (a shot of double strength coffee – not espresso) which you add to your milk and watch the colours and flavours mingle. These are generally only drunk at breakfast and made in the privacy of your own home (and certainly without froth).

They are akin to the French café au lait, and what Americans call a latte would be considered an abomination on the continent. US lattes were first made in Berkeley in America and are basically a cappuccino with extra milk added. What they call a latte; New Zealander’s call a flat white. This is all getting confusing.

But don’t worry, because you can only drink milky coffee in the mornings unless you are uncouth or a tourist – which seems to amount to the same thing. Otherwise you have an espresso, or an espresso doppio (a double espresso) or a caffe Americano which is an espresso served with a jug of hot water so you can make your own – they can’t bring themselves to adulterate the coffee in this way. New Zealanders call that a long black.

Italians are also known to drink moccaccino (which is a third of espresso with two thirds of steamed milk mixed with chocolate), caffe macchiato (espresso ‘stained/marked’ with a dash of milk) or latte macchiato (vice-versa; i.e. milk ‘stained’ with a dash of espresso). They do not drink triple Venti nonfat decafe latte white chocolate blended mocha frappucino whip. Without froth.

They do get a bit weird though with the old espresso confuso, which is a sort of coffee desert – espresso mixed with a chocolate gelato. Very confuso indeed. And the freddoccino is a cold (freddo) cappuccino. I’m not sure if they make these specially or just leave them lying around until they get cold. My mum’s good at that. I bet they don’t then put them in the microwave and forget about them though.

My very favourite is the caffe corretto, which is a shot of espresso, 'corrected' with a shot of grappa. Wow! That's enough to blow your socks off. We were walking in the snow in Dolomites for four hours and stumbled back off the mountain to a cutesy cafe by a lake when we discovered these. I could have done the walk all over again. Well, maybe not, but for about ten minutes I thought I could. Mind you, I thought I could leap tall buildings in a single bound. I was wrong.