Grotte di Oliero

Sunday 11th Oct

Last full day in Italy - as usual quite ready to go home.
We retraced our route over to Valstagna to visit the Grotte di Oliero. It's a wet cave with active continuing formation of stalactites and stalacmites. Access is via a boat ride, keep your head down. It reminded me of visiting the blue grotto at Capri, where one 20 euro boat road took you to the entrance of the cave and then when you got there had to cough up another 12 to get in the little boat to go in...what the! Like you would just want to see the entrance!!! That said in this instance the entrance ticket covered the boat as well. The waters are snow melt from the Asiago plateau that penetrates through the rock and emerges from the bottom of the cave. The resulting flow is the Canal di Brenta which at 40 metres long (before it flows into the Brenta) is the second shortest river in Europe.
Caves and the area were both worth a visit. Popular place for tunnel diving - no thank you.

Caltrano piazza was fairly hopping on the home, a farmers fair, stopped for a looksee... as we couldn't get past. Very interesting stall on all the different funghi found in the forest on the altopiano.

Hotel kitchen closed for the night... sad as the food is very good... so we went over to Calvene to Al Buso, also very busy, we had to wait for a table. I'm amazed at what these people can put away and at this place it doesn't matter what you have, primo, secondo, dolce, vino, aqua, grappa, caffe, the bill always comes to 11 euros per person. You say to the lady who runs it "conto" (how much)  she looks down at a piece of paper in her hand, folds it and says "venti due" 22 - for 2 of us, or "trenta tre" 33 for 3 of us!  And her gnocchi and ragu, great. Trouble is that was my primo, but really a secondo size.

Entrance to the cave Grotte di Oliero

The cave gear really suits me huh?

Inside the cave, only lit by guide's torch

Duck or bump your head

Another entrance, used by the thrillseeker cavedivers

Funghi stall at the Caltrano farmfair

Monte Berico

Saturday 10th Oct

In the morning we visited a friend of Frank's who used to live in Adelaide. Silvano and his wife returned to Italy in the 70's after living in Australia for 14 years. His claim to fame was that he was Don Dunstan's tailor... I got Frank to ask him if he made the pink shorts for Don.... they sure had that Italian feel - short and tight! He couldn't remember if he had because he had made a lot of things for him and he is an older gentleman now.

Later we drove into Vicenza to visit Basilica of St Maria of Monte Berico. The story goes that in the 1400s the Virgin Mary appeared to a local peasant and told him that she would rid the Veneto of the plague being experienced if a sanctuary was built at the top of Monte Berico. A few famous builder/architects have had a bash at redecoration over the years, including of course our favourite Palladio. In the 1700s also a 700 metre arched walkway, grouped in 10s to represent the rosary, was built to connect the sanctury on the hill with the town, quite a sight to behold.... as is the interior of the baroque church... nothing succeeds like excess. This year's Giro Italia ended at the top of the walkway.

Still lots of the 3 wheelers Vespas, often driven by huge men who fill up the cabin, funny to see 2 men inside

Walkway up to Monte Berico

Baroque interior - very fancy

Very cute holy water fonts

View to Vicenza from the Piazzale in front of the Basilica

The walkway turns a corner, very impressive

Basilica on Monte Berico

Stoccareddo - sacre bleu!

Friday 9th Oct

Long drive to Vastagna for Grotto Oliero  which turned out only open on Sundays in October, but really the drive great through the valley to get there and then back through the hills... love those narrow winding roads with blind corners!
Anyway we stopped at a little town in the commune of Gallio, Stoccareddo. All but a few of the 400 villagers have the surname of Bau - they never mixed with outsiders due to the remote location so they are all descended from the same family. They consume a high fat diet and no-one in the village has ever died of a heart attack or stroke. An American study showed that the inbreeding over a period of 8 centuries is the cause of the good health they enjoy... they say not many birth defects as they tend to have children with distant cousins, not first cousins... however there was a notice (with great fanfare) on the bar window congratulating a girl going off to university.... so perhaps this is an unusual instance...if you know what I mean!

One of 7 original fountains in Caltrano, source of water in days of yore. Could be from Roman times

Old Caltrano fountain

Old Caltrano fountain

Old Caltrano fountain

Old Caltrano fountain

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Old Caltrano fountain

In the hills

Stoccareddo Church, town was destroyed in war

 Old Caltrano fountain

Stoccareddo - ancient language, part German/Italian

Monte Grappa

We headed back to homebase via Monte Grappa. This ended up being quite a drive up hill via tiny winding road. On the summit is a military memorial monument, in which rests the remains of 12,615 soldiers (Italian and Austro-Hungarian soldiers), among them 10,332 are unknown. One feels a trifle whingy about complaining about the trip up because when you get there, there are maniacs who have ridden bikes and hiked the 1,775 m. Several kilometers of WW1 tunnels along the ridge are open.
Had a lovely lunch at the cafe there, nourishment required due to icy temperature up there.

Monte Grappa view

View to the sunny plains from Monte Grappa

Monte Grappa War Memorial

Frank's Monte Grappa meal, Sopressa, polenta, mushrooms & 2 SLABS cheese

Frank's best day so far.. the Biennale Venezia 2015

Wednesday 7th Oct

Train into Venice only took 30 minutes, but of course the Biennale ticket office not open til 10am!  Really what did we expect? Anyway going on the day, ie not having booked a music  or drama performance, all that is available is the art side in Gardens and the Arsenale, but most of that is on the modern out-there side ie mostly installation art, not really my thing and definitely not Frank's - how would you describe it, say a cross between a dulux blank wall paint color display and an expression of a 1960's psychedelic drugcrazed nightmare. The expression on some peoples' faces as they looked in was priceless. Really good for people watching.
A couple of the countries exhibitions were OK - Australia was not the worst, Japan was OK. Anyway footsore and weary, we saw it!
In general Venice looking the same, but even this late in the year the crowds are horrendous..... so the few other bits and pieces I had on my list... forget it, so ended up getting back to our hotel about 5.
After last night fiasco, found a pizzeria further down the road... when I checked on Tripadvisor, the Osteria we dined at last night had 3 and a half out of 5, with a lot of the comments along the same lines as our impressions. The pizzeria had 4 and a half.  We had a great pizza (and Frank got his red beer... which he has taken to over here) Frank is hauling me up on that comment as I quite liked the red beer also, but as I pointed out to him I have taken to the prosecco more!) The prosecco here is really nice, light, not overly bubbly....and cheap.. for example in the bar in this Arsiero hotel it is 2.2 euro... no wonder all the road workers take to it!

Venice from the waterbus

Doge's Palace

Quiet Venice canal

Japan's art installation, Red fishing net, hung with rusty keys- bizarre but effective

Can't remember the country, but dripping paint cans !!

Australia's permanent Biennale building

Australia's display - part of - looked like shrunken heads

Probably the only country with paintings & I forget which - but not bad

Backside of Australia's permanent Biennale building

Washing day backstreet of Venice

Back to Italy

Tuesday 6th Oct

Unfortunately had to leave Slovenia to return to Italy, but as we were headed for Venice all good. The drive through the Fruili area was very picturesque,mountainous, lots of vegetation and cute little towns, We were headed for a  town out of Treviso, San Trovaso, as it had a train station with direct train to Venice.  This is a very heavily populated area, can't tell where one town ends and another starts and traffic ghastly. It's like they have four rush hours, because with workers heading home for long break in the middle of the day and then returning, and then school ending around 1pm, there are multitudinous cars on the road.

Hours ended up being devoted to finding a Peugot service centre as a warning light had developed on the car dashboard after filling up in Croatia. The book seemed to indicate go directly to a peugot dealer for diagnostics as it was an engine fault but the car was still running fine, so mum's the word, he who must be obeyed decided it could wait til we were back in Italy. Hours later ended up no problem, fault due to Euro 6 pollution standard requirements, issue with diesel high spec requirements computer gets it's knickers in a knot deciding how much AdBlue to add after tank topped up so throws up an error.

After dumping bags in Hotel, drove over to Bassano Dal Grappa. Bassano lovely old town with famous Palladio-designed bridge. Old centre looked a bit tired this time and the bridge was having it's black and white marble chequered floor redone, so a bit disappointing really but still the bridge is still a beautiful sight to behold. We did a bit of windowshopping, had a snack and then drove back to San Trovaso.

Closest food for tea was Osteria Ombre Rosse which looked promising when we entered, sort of atmospheric winebar ambience... but that was the last good impression we had. They fancied themselves as wine connoisseurs and all the local intelligentsia of Treviso were there sniffing and snorting. Of course we got them offside when Frank asked for a birra....waiter went away and came back "no birra", next sin, OK We'll have a half litre of house red - no had to have a bottle. Kitchen didn't open til 8, so no menu til well after that....what? they didn't know what they were cooking?
But really it was front of house mumma and papa who excelled in customer service...not. The food was presented as though the virgin mary had shat it out and really was very ordinary, as in ok, not inedible but hohum and at the high end price-wise. Oh Well, all part of the fun.

Bovec Slovenia

Black and white sheep trotted onto the road

The donkey was supervising

Lots of Gloria Soames like this in the Treviso province

Very gracious house in Bassano Dal Grappa

Palladio's bridge Bassano dal Grappa

Entrance to the Palladio Bridge

Piazza Bassano Dal Grappa

The bridge form the other side

Houses along the Brenta, Bassano dal Grappa

City walls Treviso...there's a moat as well

Bovec, Slovenia

Monday 5th Oct

After rain, lightning etc yesterday on our journey here, woke up to beautiful blue clear sky today...very lucky.
Great cheese omelet for breakfast, have to comment as this is unusual!
Bovec is all about sking in winter and rafting, canyoning, paragliding, hiking and mountainbiking in summer..... you may wonder what we are doing here! But really it is an area of great natural beauty.

First port of call was the Boka Waterfall, regarded as THE most magnificent in Slovenia. It is visible from the road, but of course we had to go rockclimbing for an hour to get to the best vantage point... learnt later that if you really wanted to be adventurous you could climb the whole damn thing to view it from above.... completely unnecessary in my view!

Next Tolmin Gorges in the Triglav National park. This was a walking path through the gorge past thermal springs (wasn't tempted,),Medvedova glava (the Bears Head - a large rock stuck between the walls of a canyon, it is covered with moss and looks like a hairy bears head), Dantes Cave - too wet to go in unfortunately. The environment is really beautiful lush with ferns, vistas of the gorges and streams etc.

Lunch at the National Park bar was speciality of the area, fried polenta with a savoury quark (of all things) - different!

On the way home we stopped at the the Italian Charnel House on Gradic Hill in Kobarid. The remains of 7000 Italian known and unknown soldiers from WW1 were interred at the site. Franks Grandfather fought in battles in the area in WW1  so he was interested in this.

Frank on the way to Boka Falls

Boka Falls

Boka Falls - see the rainbow

Little shepherd huts in the fields

Vegetation in Tolmin Gorge

Beautiful clear water in Tolmin Gorge

Tolmin Gorge

Me on bouncy bridge

The Bears Head Tolmin Gorge

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Italian Charnet House Kobarid

Bled cream cake  --- awful!

Me