Odd Job Italiano: 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.