Hello to the Dolomites, feat. Venice

What is Italy famous for? Well, many things, but one thing is its mountains. So, in true better-later-than-never-fashion (I don’t feel too bad though, as this was the month that the postcards from this trip finally arrived at their destinations), the next three entries will be dedicated to my early June trip to my most recent travel destination, the spectacular Dolomites. I went there with my old friend Nikki (true fans will remember her from places like Bali). She had googled “hiking routes in Europe” and come up with this area in Northern Italy. She suggested we rent a car and climb some mountains. I was game. Especially since I haven’t done many car holidays, and I personally would exhaust myself through the stress of driving somewhere famed for its less-than-chill driving habits, I was very happy to have a keen driver as my companion.

We flew to Venice, which was a super-exciting experience on its own. I’d never been to Venice, and though it has interested me for years, I’ve never considered it a priority to visit – it’s meant to be rather of a tourist trap. But let me tell you this, arriving at Venice airport was an utterly unique experience, how they have made use of every single scrap of land in the waters.

When you arrive in Finland by plane, you see plenty of little islands in the sea, empty little islands covered in trees or – once in a while – one solo house for some lucky soul. Arriving in Venice, you saw similar-sized and shaped islands, the only exception being that these islands were utterly jam-packed with houses, streets and people. It was sobering realising how the legendary city of Venice could easily be mistaken from far away for a random desert island off the Finnish coast.

We left the airport, put on sun cream, and walked in the scorching sun to our rental car place, about fifteen minutes. We tried to make sure we agreed to the right things and rejected the wrong things, meaning we’d be securely insured but not utterly devoid of money. And then, we were off.

Nikki drives a lot in Finland, but this was her first time driving in Italy. She assured me multiple times during the first few hours that we will end up in an accident, and used a wide variety of inventive rude words while commenting on the other drivers’ habits of speeding by at something like 160km/h, pulling up in front of you when they’re barely past you, not using the blinks, etc etc. To be honest, and I think this is rather high praise, I never did fear in the passenger seat despite her less-than-confident comments. I know she’s an excellent driver, but I don’t think anyone can jump naturally into the zooming world of Italian Driving.

(Spoiler: We weren’t in an accident, nothing even close to one.)

We drove through the flat Italian lowlands, and at some point I saw something on the horizon. You know when you have a question that sounds stupid in your head but you actually don’t know the answer? This one popped up in my mind.

“Are those clouds or mountains?”

(Like the Interstellar Waves scene (ah, one of the best scenes in the history of not just cinematography, but of EVERYTHING).)

They turned out to be mountains (unlike in Interstellar).

And suddenly we were in the Dolomitean mountain land, with mountains first ahead of us, then surrounding us. We went on a high up tunnel which gave Nikki kittens, and went through multiple tunnels and multiple “galerias”, see pic.

We stopped at a nice little service station where we had yummy smoothie/juice/somethings which were very nice, and sat outside with mountain views on each side. Oh, also it had an (unused) cable car in its yard, that was funky.

Our final destination was a village called Canazei, saw later it’s not even described as something liveable but an “Alpine resort”. One main street, many restaurants and hotels (most closed), mountains on each side.

We checked into our hotel (more like a self-contained residence, we had our own kitchen for example), chilled for a bit, and then looked for shops on Google Maps. It showed a couple in this place, all closing by 7.30pm. It was around 6.45. We still had time. We went out.

The first “supermarket” was some special delicacy place that sold local tourist stuff like jams and mustards – not the place to find bread, fruit and Nikki’s Coca-Cola. We decided not to risk losing time and walked to the end of the road to the very reliable Spar, except in Italy it’s called Despar, and in actual fact it wasn’t reliable at all, as it was closed.

Essentially, there was no shop in this “town”, no shop we found at least (later we found another – closed – supermarket on a side street, maybe that one would’ve been open in the daytimes… dunno). So, we went to an open café for an aperitif (when you order a drink, you get nuts and crisps with it, and I was STARVING), got take-away Cokes for Nikki, and then headed out rather in a hurry, as dark rain clouds were gathering above us.

We walked, walked faster and faster as the large drops started coming ever-more-frequently, finally running the last stint to this one restaurant that the lady at the hotel had recommended. La Cantinetta seemed very inviting, and indeed we were not the only ones who felt the allure of the warm, dry indoors. The friendly yet a bit stressed waiter informed us we’re in for a half hour wait at least, since we were not the only ones to have come rushing into one of the only open restaurants as the skies opened with waterfalls. We didn’t really have any other option but to wait. Though our residence was very near, we had no food except for a half-open bag of mini cinnamon buns Nikki had bought at Helsinki airport. And we were HUNGRY. It was a weird feeling, relying on a restaurant to provide you with food.

Well, the wait was fine, it was interesting watching the efficient yet chill waiters (most of whom were rather handsome bald men of different ages) rush about. Finally we got a table, and we ordered our dishes. Famous Italian pizza, hurrah!

My previous Italian pizza experience wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t anything taste bud-boggling either. This time round? My pizza was yummy. I think maybe having eggplant and courgette on a pizza isn’t the best option, but I was so hungry I decided I need something ‘foody’ on my pizza in addition to the ever-must Cheese. The English translation “spinach” turned out to be “onion and red pepper” which was perhaps a shame, but ah well.

And when we couldn’t eat anymore (Nikki’s Carbonara was such a big portion that it looked barely touched by the time she stated she was full), the waiter came, and to my happiness did NOT question the quality of the food as we’d left so much, but suggested “takeaway?”. So we left with our doggy bag after a very enjoyable meal, where we forgot to show our 10% discount card from the hotel but remembered to give lots of tip to the very nice waiters.

The next few days involved hikes and many cable cars, to be explained in further detail in other posts.

We spent three nights at Canazei, and then it was time to leave. We hurried away from the crazy snow-tipped mountains (look forward to future entries!) to make it on time to the hire car rental place. Nikki wondered aloud that it was taking us a very different way than we came, but only halfway through the trip did I think to double-check the destination GoogleMaps was taking us to. Well, turned out Nikki’s iPhone or Googlemaps or something isn’t reliable, coz it wasn’t taking us to the Viaggiare Rental Car Service in Venice, but the Viaggiare Rental Car Service in Verona. Yes, okay, human error, but the fact is that when you type in the actual address of the Venice rental place, it automatically goes to the Verona one. It worked fine on my Android Googlemaps, so we had to manually zoom in and click on our destination on Nikki’s iPhone to get it to take us to the right place. So, turned out we were one-and-a-half-hours late and had to pay a, well, hefty fine, heftier than what the dude on the phone told me when I rung him up, so we were both in rather low spirits for the rest of the day.

Venice itself was how I expected it – beautiful but quite packed with people. I decided I didn’t want a pricey gondola trip after we spent so much on the exorbitant car trip, so we resigned ourselves to walking around. The super-narrow streets were my second to favourite thing, Nikki describing them as “cellar corridors” each time I shouted to her to turn right/left and she was astounded I actually meant the cramped gap between two buildings. GPS didn’t work too well in all these tiny pathways surrounded by jam-packed buildings, so navigation was a fun combination of studying your phone and using your sense of direction (never my highest skill in life).

Please enjoy this blobule of photos from Venice.

And our favourite things about Venice? For Nikki it was the little crabs we observed in the canals; for me it was our transportation to Venice town itself from the airport.

Let me introduce to you: the Waterbus, one of the ways to get to Venice from the Marco Polo airport. You follow the waterbus signs at the airport, and finally you reach water and boats. You find the correct bus, purchase the ticket, get reminded to put on your mask, and climb in.

In all fairness, I think you could make your waterbus a lot cooler and more tourist-friendly – there was no outdoor area, and the indoor area was built so low down that the little windows were high above your head. Not the best way to sightsee. I took off my shoes and sat on my knees on the seat for the whole ride, admiring our whizzy ride through the waterways, slowing down when a boat was coming towards us from the opposite direction, stopping at various docks before disembarking on our central stop, and enjoying being entertained by Nikki’s duck-look whenever I looked inwards.

#funkinessgalore

Next stop, the mountain lake of Sorapis. Stay tuned.

Emzy

xoxo