My last day in Vigevano was planned to be a trip to Milan, but a rail workers' strike changed our plans to a much better option as it turned out. Katy drove us to Lake Garda and the winter light on the lake with all the beautiful old hotels lining the shore was just magical. We took a boat to Isola dei Pescatori (Island of the Fishermen) which is one of the beautiful Borromeo islands in the lake. It is still the home of many traditional lake fishermen, their dozens of cats, and a pervading aroma of cat pee due to the lack of rain to wash it all away!!!! Despite this it is a beautiful place which made me wish I could paint to capture all the changing shades of light and colour on the water, the mountains and the lovely old buidings.
The next day it was off by train and bus to the Dolomites, past the towering cliffs between Verona and Trento, with teeny hillside towns and monasteries watching over the valley as the train slid through. The bus trip from Trento to Campitello is more ooh-aah territory as we passed through town after town straight out of the Tyrolean picturebooks, as this is regarded as Sud Tyrol rather than Italy by many inhabitants for whom Austrian German is the first language rather than Italian.
I have now spent a week zooming all over hundreds (quite literally) of kilometres of snowy slopes covered in ice cream snow. Alas the ice cream is becoming a bit too frozen as we need more fresh snow so I am doing my skiing early in the day while the grooming and man-made snow keeps things nice, then I go sightseeing in the afternoons. We hope to go to Bolzano on Tuesday to see the Ice Man, then it is off to Milano for a brief morning's sightseeing before heading to NY to see Steve and Anna.
Ciao and love to all.
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