The Dolomites (or might nots)
We got a really good deal on this hotel in Cortina. They were offering a half price deal if you let them allocate your room on arrival, so it was a bit of pot luck what room we’d get. The deal also included breakfast…and dinner! Consequently, we have been able to get to know the staff a little and there’s only one of them who speaks any English at all. It’s fun trying to communicate and try out our Italian (our repertoire is limited to day the least). This morning I asked if I could please have a latte.
She clarified: “With milk?”
“Yes!” I said, excited it had been that easy. It seemed too good to be true, and when she delivered a piping hot cup of milk to the table, I realised it was. Just milk. No coffee. Oh well, I’ll try again tomorrow.
The other funny thing about the breakfast was that it was set-up like a buffet but you had to ask the waiters to serve you; a Claytons buffet. Tongs in hand, the eager staff waited to get the nod for what to put on your plate. One lady in particular must have started her working career at McDonalds because she was constantly giving us the old up-sell. Would you like prunes with your pineapple? You can’t have one croissant, have three. What? You only want two cookies? I took two pieces of toast in the end just to appease her.
Having a car in the Dolomites is a lot easier than having to rely on local buses that are few and far between. Lots of the best places to go are quite a distance from each other. We packed up Jimmy the Jeep, heeding the advice that up here in the Italian Alps, beautiful weather can turn sour very quickly and to pack extra warm clothes. I had donned my bargain basement Aldi hiking shoes, hoping they’d be better quality than Molly’s Aldi bag with the dodgy wheels. I can happily report, after dragging them around with me for weeks now and not yet wearing them, they are probably the most comfy shoes I’ve ever worn. Wish I hadn’t left it so long.
So, hiking shoes…check. Water bottles…check. Puffer jackets…check. Some token lycra activewear so as to blend in…check. I even brought my walking poles that Ross had bought me. We were set to sweat and off we went.
Today there was an inordinate number of cyclists taking to the winding roads - in packs, in pairs, alone. They were making it a very long trip, spreading out across the whole lane so no one could pass them(though of course some of those crazy Italians did!). The roads are already so narrow and tight, all these bikes were making it so tricky - taking the level of difficulty of driving here, up a few notches. They were picking up speed on the downhill but really struggling going up, holding up long lines of snaking traffic. At one point there was a man in an orange hat with a huge orange flag that he was waving enthusiastically, guiding all the cyclists towards a drink station. That’s when we realised it was some sort of event or race. Once they’d all turned off, the traffic flowed a whole lot better; drivers’ knuckles noticeably less white as they gripped their steering wheels.
The Dolomites has over twenty breathtakingly beautiful lakes, each one offering something slightly different, so our plan today was to go on a bit of a lake crawl. The first gorgeous lake was right by the side of the road, its water a stunning pale blue; surrounded by towering mountain peaks. Molly and I got out of the car and let out a collective “Whooaaah!!”
The next lake on our must-see hit list was inside the national park. We knew we’d have to pay an entry fee and had a sinking feeling as we approached the ticket office on the side of the road, that we should have withdrawn some cash. There was a lady with a walkie-talkie, in the middle of the road, who reassured us no cash was needed, just an online payment. Unfortunately, they’d wound the poster displaying the web address around a pole so you could only see half of it. Molly’s fingers zoomed around her phone as she tried to get us an online pass but it still hadn’t come through when we got to the ticket gate, where two old blokes stood - keepers of the boomgate - who pointed in the direction of the carpark. There was yet another national park employee at the carpark, who pointed us to a parking spot. It was SO confusing. How the heck did we get through that boomgate? I assumed it must have been off-limits and we’d simply have to walk from there. Molly pointed out it was a half hour drive so it’d take us hours to trek in and probably wasn’t ideal. We went back around the loop three times, past the lady on the road, the two old blokes and the carpark man (all of them thinking we were loopy) and it was only on round three that they finally checked our pass and actually raised that mighty boomgate. Surely there has to be a better system.
The road curled us up and around the mountains, as we dodged buses, negotiated some crazy hairpin bends and watched we didn’t get snapped by the little orange robot speed cameras, until we reached a little area of carparks and followed the signs on-foot to Lake di Braies. This lake was worth a double “Whoooaah!” Incredibly beautiful, there was a restaurant with outdoor tables, flourishing flowers aplenty and a little church by the water. Wooden rowboats were skimming the ice blue surface and families with prams were gathering on the shore to gaze at the beauty of the scene.
This area is a real hybrid of Italian and Austrian cultures. It’s still Italy but with a very strong Austrian influence. The lunch menu was in German and Italian offering such culinary delights as ‘shlutzkrapfen’ and ‘shweinsstelze’ or the most tempting, a ‘stinco’. We settled for pretzels, though when I ordered mine, no one could understand what on earth I was saying, even though I thought I was doing my best German accent. “Pretz - ools”. Come on.
We were never more thankful for the loose coins in the bottom of my bag as we had to pay for the privilege of using the loo. There was a full-time cleaning lady, rushing in with her mop and toilet brush after every use of her pristine ablutions block, offering more paper and keeping it a tip-top, skid-mark-free zone. Two euros well spent.
Our plan had been to circumnavigate the lake but as we were setting off, just as we had been warned, the clouds started descending lower, obscuring the magnificent mountains and the weather turned bad in an instant. One minute the sun was shining, the next, it was pouring with rain. Rowers were scurrying to shore in an effort to escape the deluge and families were making a bee-line for their cars. A few of us had gathered under the wooden boathouse dock. The two young workers, hauling people out of their rowboats had a captive audience and they posed for photos with their matching rainbow umbrellas, danced to Guns’n’Roses, complete with air guitar, and delighted the under-dock onlookers.
Any hopes that the rain would ease as quickly as it came were soon dashed as the heavens continued to empty buckets down upon us relentlessly. We ploughed on with our plan and headed to a couple more lakes. The lakes themselves were still beautiful but the giant mountains surrounding them were completely hidden by cloud. Every now and then a rugged peak would appear, revealing the magnitude of what we couldn’t see. We sat in the car, gazing out at where the mountains should have been and laughed as we Googled pictures of what the view looked like on a clear day.
Here’s hoping the cloud cover lifts tomorrow so we can have a sneak peek at those elusive mountains before we leave.
