Part Three: Trent

The final leg of the trip too took us to Trent, a ski tourism town and otherwise very nice place. We packed daypacks with what we would need for the hikes we'd planned, left our luggage with the hotel manager and caught the train out of Venice. The train took us through mostly the outskirts of towns and I was surprised by all the vineyards and orchards we passed.

Trent lacks the dramatic grandeur of Venice, but it was very beautiful. Mountains ring the city so there are ridges in every direction. The downtown radiates outward from a central fountain and it is a comfortable size. We walked around the better part of a day before we felt like we were seeing too much of the same thing. Impressive sights in Trento: the Fountain of Neptune, the frescoes that decorate the buildings along the main square, and the giant, wicker goose in the park across from the train station.

The next day we took the bus to a trailhead about an hour away and struck out for Edemolo, the inn (they call them refugios) where we we're scheduled to spend the first night. We weren't really in the Alps (only the Dolomites), but between the pitch of the climb and the slippery, scree-covered trail the first day was a fairly strenuous walk. The inn was wonderful as was the family who ran it.

We were apparently the first Americans to every stay there--the hostess told us during dinner that she hadn't guessed we were American because we weren't fat. (Incidentally, American tourists in northern Italy always get confused for Germans). We had a poor night's sleep in a dorm-style bedroom, a small, European-style breakfast of bread and coffee, and set out to the next inn

The walk wasn't nearly as difficult on the second day, but the Seven Saddles Inn where we stayed was remarkable. As a vegetarian, I mostly ate polenta (a regional favorite apparently) and what the dish may have lacked, the setting made up.

After a more restful night at Sette Selle we hiked back to the trailhead and caught back to the bus station.

We had a very lovely diner in Trent including some fantastic onion and rosemary bread, caught the train back to Venice the next morning, and flew out the next day. All and all a wonderful trip, but, I suppose that since I've been back in real life for close to a month now it's time for the blog to come back from vacation as well. Expect the next few posts to line up my fitness and diet goals for the rest of the year and, hopefully, schedule out a couple of races between now and December.

Part 2: Venice

First: Venice is a really, really acceptable city. Preferring to see what I saw rather than treat the trip like homework, I purposely didn't do a lot of research before going. The flight from Munich was unremarkable and the weather was predictably hot and rainy, There's no motorized vehicle in Venice except for boats, so I caught a bus at the airport and struck out for the island. From the central bus depot it was a short, three hour walk to the hotel.

 

Here's the thing that you really need to know about Venice. For the first ten hours you feel more lost than you have probably ever felt before. You feel so lost you despair of it. But somehow, by the middle of the next day, after a couple cups of coffee and some pastry, you realize that you can't get really get that lost--it's an island after all--and a pretty small one at that. So you wander around for a while (lost of course) but you start to get a feel for the way the city moves just the same.

I was only there four days, but was very impressed; you really couldn't walk more than a few minutes any direction without seeing something genuinely beautiful. The following are a couple examples in no particular order:

  

I had a couple meals to rival Munich while in Venice, but the place I'll really remember as the best is Ristorante Rosa Rosa, which first got my attention by playing Diana Krall's cover of "The Heart of Saturday Night" but kept my attention with some very nice dishes, including a great all vegetable antipasto and a delicate pizza.

I had planned on a least a couple runs while I was there, but the crowds were just way too much. Instead, I walked a lot and saved my energy for the hiking I will talk about in part three.

Part One: Munich

The first part of my trip was a quick run to Munich. A good friend of mine was finishing a Fulbright at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and I wanted to see how he was doing. We played it cool and mostly hung out with friends he'd made during his year there, but he did have some time to play tourist guide for me as well. Munich is really vibrant and, like most of that part of the world, does a really interesting job of mixing the old and the new. I especially liked the central city area in which twelfth-century cathedrals shared space with Givenchy outlets.

  
Probably because of the university, Munich seemed pretty young and energetic, this was never more apparent than in the Englisher Garden, a sprawling park in the center of the city where I went jogging my second day. There were, of course, plenty of tourists like me, but there were also tons of kids playing in the sun. Apparently it had been very rainy for a couple weeks and this was the first nice day in a while.

After running we went to a wonderful restaurant called Prinz Myshkin where I had an excellent tofu stroganoff with mixed vegetables. Another dish I can recommend if you're ever in Munich is spaetzl, a very tasty egg noodle with onion and cheese. This is apparently a classic Bavarian meal and they take it seriously. The most traditional plates also have some sort of ground beef or sausage, but I didn't have any trouble getting vegetarian options.

My original plans for this trip involved a bicycle tour of Munich. We didn't end of doing it, but I was interested to see just how much people there relied on their bikes. I saw an incredible variety of people riding bikes trough town.

We only had three days, however, so when the last morning arrived we burned rubber (almost literally) to the airport and headed out--my friend back to his job in the US and me to Venice.

more to come

Home Again, Home Again

Sorry for the long silence, but I've been traveling quite a bit over the last couple weeks. The quick version is that I sort of fell into an opportunity to spend two weeks gallivanting around Europe and took it. The longer version will take up the next couple posts, so stay tuned for stories about food, and exercise in the Old World.