Itinerant Strings: I Dolomiti (The Dolomites)

Driving with Italians is not as bad as one might have thought. Our little VW Polo gets us up and down the narrow mountain roads OK and we've seen some truly amazing views. The mountain and river bed compositions are very much like the Canadian Rockies. The limestone is whiter and the peaks seem to be more closely packed together, giving the impression of being even higher. The roads are twisty and a bit narrow but well built and signed.
On the way to Cortina d’Ampezzo, our base for the next week, we
picked up Louise at a train station in Calalzo. She had begun her retirement by skipping town the day after school ended to spend three days in Firenze (Florence), the heartland of renaissance art. Then she took a couple of trains to connect with us for a week in the Dolomites prior to all of us joining the official tour with the Port Angeles Symphony which begins in Rome on the 7^th. Louise had received, as a retirement gift, a nice new I-pad. Between the wonders of WiFi and GPS we made contact with no more effort than a dim sum restaurant rendezvous. (Trish, Tony/Donna and Mary Anne, had you noticed how this blog doesn’t seem to let a paragraph or two go down before a food reference of some sort creeps in? You hadn’t? I didn’t think so.)
Steve and Linda, we can’t tell you how many times in the week to follow we would bow in gratitude to the NNW (Nuenen, NL) for the GPS you lent us.

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A gate in the town wall

Field art

Reminded us of Kyran and Tamsyn

A bell tower in every town

Retiree in Italy

Coming into Cortina

View from our hotel

A hike/climb in the Dolomites has been my dream for many decades. I’ve always been intrigued by descriptions and photos of the Vie Ferrate. (Singular is Via Ferrata or ‘Iron Way’) These routes throughout the dolomites, and now many other places, are supported in places with cables, metal ladders, suspension bridges, etc. to make possible mountain experiences normally reserved for real mountaineers. There are hundreds of these in the Dolomites, some long and very exposed for lengthy stretches and others, (the routes we took), quite moderate, but nonetheless containing bits that you would not want to do without the insurance of being clipped on to the cable with harness, leads and carabiners. So here we were at last!
We settled into our nice little hotel right in the middle of town…. Looks out on the pedestrian street and church square.
Cortina d’Ampezzo was unknown to me except as a Winter Olympics site (1956 - the old wooden ski jump with Olympic Rings is still there). Now we know it as Italy’s St. Moritz or Whistler - pricey but so nice to be here for 6 days. Did our first Via Ferrata yesterday - a blast! Our first ferrata was graded 1A….the easiest and shortest. Routes are sign posted and numbered on red/white-red markers. We drove high up to a ‘Refugio’ (ree-FOO-gee-oh), like an inn in the mountains, usually with a bar and food, and simple accommodation. Many people hike from one to another, so they don’t have to carry food or camping gear. Starting from there we followed a gentle path, a few switch-backs, and headed onto the rock ledges. No problem. Beautiful views. The only tricky bit was coming down the other side on the shaley switchbacks near the bottom. The whole thing took about three hours including photo stops. Susan and Louise felt justifiably proud of themselves and I was very happy to be there, looking across to the valleys and passes where we would drive tomorrow.

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