2024 - My Mediterranean Odsesey

In 2003, when I was travelling in Europe with my friend, Kim, I knew I wanted to explore more of the northern Italian lakes.  I had been to Lago Maggiore a couple of times but had never seen Lago di Garda.  So, 21 years ago was the first time I had been to this beautiful part of Italy.  Since then, I have been back here at least 6 or 7 times.  Each of those times, like the first, I stayed just a bit south of Malchesine in a suburb called Val di Sogno.  It is within walking distance of this pretty little town.  The walk from there is along the lakeshore on a route called Lungolago.  All along the way, there are hotels fronting the lake.  One, Hotel du Lac, is a beautiful hotel and, since that first time, I have dreamt of staying there.  Today, that dream came true.  When we were booking hotels for this trip, I decided to stay here and treat myself to a lakefront room with a balcony at this 4 star hotel.   As we drove south from ...

Seceda, or Alpe di Seceda, is  the mountain located in the Puez Odle Nature Park in Val Gardena . It is part of the Dolomites UNESCO World Heritage Site.  The closest village to it is Ortisei so, when I was looking for accommodation in this area, I naturally tried find a hotel in that village.  For the last two days, we have been staying at the Hotel Dolomiti Madonna and it has been perfect - sadly, the weather hasn't been.  Each morning we check out the Seceda webcam to see what the weather up the mountain was like and it certainly hasn't been sunny.  Yesterday, however, was our last chance to see it.  We patiently waited until noon as it had been raining in the village until then.  Suddenly, the clouds broke and the sun started to come out.  The hotel is about a 10 minute walk to the base where you get the cable cars up the mountain.  Even though we knew the summit wasn't completely clear, we took a chance.  Part of our hesitancy was t...

Tuesday, I left the crowded metropolis of  Istanbul , flew to Venice and stayed overnight near the airport.  Today (Wednesday) I met my friend who had flown in from Canada and we drove north from Venice into the Dolomites (Dolomiti in Italian) which is one of the regions in Italy where there are Alps.  We are now staying in the little town of Ortisei (population of about 4600) in the Val Gardena region of northern Italy.  What a complete difference in culture, scenery, prices, population density, and ambience.   We rented our car at the Venice airport - who knew that MG made station wagons (I will post a photo but didn't get one today) - and we drove for about 4 hours through some of the most amazing scenery on one of the most challenging roads I have ever seen.  We had started from the airport heading to Belluno and, from there, went through several mountain passes before we finally reached our destination.  As I mentioned, the scenery was specta...