Wednesday July 13th 2022

Most of today was spent travelling home.

While we were waiting to be collected, I took a few photos of Molveno, which is such a beautiful place.

We waited outside the hotel for our transport. This is the view of the mountains from the front of the hotel.

And from the veranda at the back of the hotel, there is this view of the lake.

We wished we had more time to spend at the lake, but we were out somewhere every day except Monday, and anyway most of every day was too hot to walk around the lake, where there is very little shade.

The transport arrived and drove us to Venice airport, where we arrived in just under 3 hours. We queued to check in, queued to go through security, queued for something to eat and drink, queued for passport control, and queued to get on the plane. The plane left about 15 minutes late so we arrived about 15 minutes late. It was a very long walk through the airport, then a long wait for baggage, but our cases arrived eventually and we were met by our taxi, who brought us home. Almost 10 hours travelling, but at least we are home.

Tuesday July 12th 2022

Today is the last day of our holiday. We went to visit the castle of Caldes, driving first through the Val de Sole and the Val de Non, areas which are known for the growing of apples. The land is very green, the mountains less high and there are no jagged rocky peaks.

The apple trees are arranged in rows and are flat, rather than rounded, which I suppose makes for ease of picking. 

We drove first to Cles, where we caught the train to Caldes. The castle is just outside Caldes station. Our guide told is that Caldes is named for a hot spring which was found near the river in the valley below. You may just be able to make out the river in my photo above, thought it’s rather low at the moment. The photo was taken from just below the castle. As we looked at the river, we could see canoes and rubber rafts making use of the white water.

The original castle was just a tower, built by the da Cagnò family beside the north-south road through the Val di Sole so they could control and tax the trade that passed along the road. Our guide said timber was exported to Austria and salt imported from Germany along the road. The original tower was also a house. Further control was exerted by the building of another tower high on the mountain above Caldes.

This isn’t a great photo, it’s been zoomed 5 times and expanded some more by editing out some of the vegetation above and below, but it gives an idea of what the original tower might have looked like. 

In 1464 the last of the family died and the castle was inherited by his cousins, so ownership of the castle passed to the rich and influential Thun family, who owned a great deal of property in the region. They gradually expanded the building, incorporating the tower into a square plan building, which was further increased over the centuries. 

The original tower is the right-hand side of the building, with the rather traditional looking roof. The sloping roof on the left is the later building. Just to complete the castle’s history, it was sold to a local family in the 1880s and allowed to fall into decay. It is now owned by the province of Trento and has been restored.

You enter into what is now a large room but was once a courtyard, as you can see from the cobbled floor.

Once it was a room adjacent to the kitchen. The huge hooks in the ceiling were for hanging meat.

The rooms upstairs are more comfortable. This was the Count’s study.

It is in the original castle tower, but has been made more comfortable by being panelled in fir wood which has been decorated with stencilled plant motifs. The ceiling and floor are also wood, for warmth, and there is a 17th century majolica stove by the door. The current furnishings were recently donated to the restored castle by another family, but are in keeping with the castle’s appearance in the 17th and 18th centuries.

We went up a spiral staircase to see a tiny room with a sad story, as it was used as a prison for a daughter who fell in love with somebody considered unsuitable. The original story was then turned into the legend of Olinda, a girl during the medieval period who fell in love with a minstrel, was imprisoned by her father in the tiny room which she painted with floral motifs, before being found dead. 

The legend is based on actual happenings in the 17th century, when Maria Elisabetta Thun fell in love with the son of a doctor and tried to elope with him. She was imprisoned by her brother and died a year later.

Outside the castle is a chapel, dedicated to the Virgin Mary and probably built some time in the 1560s. It is covered with frescos, now partly destroyed, probably around 1629.

This is one of the more complete ones, which is probably the Virgin Mary on her deathbed - she certainly looks pretty ill. Also it faces the one of her Assumption into Heaven.

I liked this one because of the attempt at trompe l’oeil architectural effects below it. Possibly other panels had a similar treatment, but so many bits of the fresco are gone. 

After the castle visit, we drove back to Cles for lunch. It was very hot again, and we thought it was just too hot to explore the small town, so we found a restaurant and spent our time there. Cles is probably typical of many small Italian towns in the area, although this one has a special exhibition of brightly coloured fibreglass animals all round the town.

We thought this might be the town hall. In which case the snail could possibly be a comment about local politics!

After lunch we returned to the hotel and fell asleep again. Tonight, it’s packing as we leave tomorrow morning. 

Monday July 11th 2022

Today was our free day, so we decided to take the Telecabine up to Pradel, which is 1000m above Molveno. We had a leisurely start this morning, and then slogged up the road to the Telecabine. It was hot already though it was only 10 o’clock, so I had to use the umbrella as a sunshade. I had forgotten to put suncream on my neck yesterday and it is red and painful. It was a very long hot climb, and when we got there, there were 3 long flights of stairs to climb as well. There were lifts, but they were marked for for pushchairs and disabled people only. Being very old obviously wasn’t being disabled so we climbed! The little cabins would have held 6 or 8 people, but there was nobody else there, so we had one to ourselves. The views on the way up were quite spectacular.

Our hotel is on the steeper left side of the town, rather than the flatter right side.

Once at Pradel, we wandered a little to look at the views, before setting off up the track to the ski lift to go further up. It was quite a new experience getting on a ski lift without my boots and skis on! 

From higher up, you could hardly even see the lake, just the surrounding mountains.

And the mountains behind us were higher, bare and rocky.

We met quite a few of our party in the restaurant, where I had a fruit smoothie. We though about going for a walk, but the slopes were steep and stony, and there was quite a wind, so no umbrella for shade. It was nice and cool though! Somebody had carved 3 little old men into the stumps of two trees.

We got back on the ski lift to go down. The views were even better going down.

You can see the lifts were not at all crowded - probably most people have gone to the beach. This part of the mountain is very popular with mountain bikers though. The ski lift has a hook on the right of the chair support to hang your bike over. The mountain bike tracks are clearly marked, and we did see a few people going down.

I didn’t get a photo of any though. There weren’t many, perhaps it’s too hot. The sky was full of people doing paragliding though. There’s one in this photo, on the top right.

Once off the ski lift, we walked in the pine forest for a while, along a little track called the bear trail. The forest was thick and cool and the slopes on both sides of the track were steep. There were no views to photograph and no bears, fortunately. Eventually, we made our way back to the Telecabine and came back down to Molveno. It was fiercely hot again and we stumbled back down the hill to the hotel where we fell on the bed, and, in my case, fell asleep for the afternoon.

When it was a bit cooler, we went to inspect the swimming pools. We tried the indoor one.

We also tried the outdoor one

You might be able to see that there’s a jacuzzi at one end. So we felt a lot cleaner and a lot cooler.

Tomorrow is our last day.

Sunday July 10th 2022

Today we set off for Lake Garda, I place I have long wanted to see. Unfortunately, I did not quite realise the huge size of it - it’s the largest lake in Italy - and we have visited only a small part of the north of it, though it’s the south I had been hoping to see. The north is very beautiful as well of course, but today was also very hot indeed so we did not have the best experience.

We began by driving along the side of Lake Molveno, which was like a mirror this morning and I would have loved to take a photo. But I was on the wrong size of the bus again, and the lake is screened by trees anyway so photographs from the road are almost impossible.

Our first stop was Malcesine, on the north east side of the narrow top part of Lake Garda. There is a historic castle and there are some old parts of the town, but it was already so hot at 10am that we walked south away from the town along the lakeside, looking for a bench to sit on in some cool shade. This is a view from just south of the town.

The walk along the side of the lake was charming, with lovely views.

We kept stopping to appreciate the views and sit on benches in the shade to watch what was going on. Lake Garda is famous for flowers, and there were some stunning displays of roses, oleanders and Busy Lizzies. There was also a variety of bird life. We spotted a whole fishing fleet of cormorants, 6 or 7 of them, sunning themselves on rocks and drying their wings before all setting off together to fish, creating an interesting looking disturbance out in the lake. There were ducks with ducklings, mother coots with tiny chicks, and this duck who hoped we had some food and looked as if he was thinking about sitting on our feet.

After wandering for a while and sitting in the shade quite a lot, we realised it was midday and time to start back and look for a sandwich before catching the 1pm ferry boat to Riva del Garda. It was fiercely hot by then, and there was no shade on the open top deck of the boat. So although we thought there might be a nice breeze, we also thought we might fry so we sat inside.

The ferry crossed the lake to the west side, to Limone, a strange little resort squashed into a narrow strip beneath beetling cliffs.

There were a great many people windsurfing and kite surfing, and some paddle boarders as well. The whole of the west coast of this narrow north part of the lake is breezy so it’s  popular for windsurfing and kite surfing, and some of the participants seemed quite unconcerned about getting in the way of huge ferry boats. 

It took about 30 minutes for the ferry to cross from Malcesine to Limone, and another 30 minutes to Riva. The harbour at Riva is in the most historic part, so the dominant thing you see as you sail in is the Torre Apponale

This tower is probably 800 years old, having been built in the early 1200s to control a trade route between 2 towns, one of which was called Ponale. Hence the name Apponale. It later became a prison, and has been altered a bit over the centuries. 

There are other interesting old parts of the town, dating from the 1300s and 1400s. The arcades around the main square used to house shops, though there are no shops there now. We wandered up some side streets to appreciate the old buildings. This is the view I liked best.

After sitting in the shade for a while, we though we would walk further around the harbour. There was a beautiful paddle steamer in another part of the harbour, near the fishing boats.

It was much nicer than the huge old repurposed car ferry we had arrived on! It was obviously still in use as a ferry, as when we came back later, it had gone.

Further round past the paddle steamer, we found an even older building than the tower.

This one is called the Rocca, and is part of a castle originally built in 1124. It has been added to and changed over the years, of course. It now houses a museum which we would have liked to look at, but we were just too hot and tired, so we pressed on to the park in search of shade and benches.

There were some gorgeous displays of flowers in the park

The beach was extremely crowded, but on the way down to it we crossed  this very pretty little river on an old wooden bridge.

Like every other lake beach we have seen so far, the beach is pebbles and sharp stones. So we won’t be swimming off any beaches, having failed to bring any rubber flip-flops or any plastic shoes. 

Soon it was time to wander back to the harbour to meet the bus back to the hotel. Tomorrow is a free day, and we won’t be getting up early! 

Saturday July 9th 2022

We started the day with a visit to Bolzano, a town north of Molveno and considerably closer to the Austrian border. Like Trento which we visited yesterday, it was originally a Raetian settlement conquered by the Romans and its history seems to be very similar to that to Trento, though it, perhaps happily, lacked the presence of any prince bishops.

We had to be dropped well outside the historic centre where tourist buses are not allowed, and walk through an underpass and a building site to reach the main square which is called Piazza Walter. It was named after a well-know medieval German poet, Walther von der Vogelweide, of whom I had never heard, to my shame. Mind you, neither has Apple autocorrect, so it has taken quite a while to correct the nonsense it insisted in making out of his name. There is a large statue of him in the centre of the square.

Also in the square was the cathedral, with a roof similar to those we have seen in Vienna.

It was built in the 14th century and has friezes pained by a pupil of Giotto, so I really wanted to go in. However, the group was being led through the town to see other places, so we followed the group to be introduced other parts of the city, resolving to return later. This turned out to have been a serious mistake, unfortunately.

We walked through the town, admiring the many renaissance buildings, but I photographed nothing because we were all walking quite fast and I intended to return when we had more time. Sadly, we never had more time. We passed through the piazza that used to be the ancient grain market (Piazza del Grano) and then under a series of Renaissance arcades. We were very grateful for the shade as it was already becoming hot. We passed through Piazza Erbe  which housed the daily market. This was another place I intended to photograph and never managed. Eventually we arrived at the Ötzi museum, which is the one everybody visits, to see Ötzi the iceman, a murder victim from 5300 years ago whose body was discovered appearing from a melting glacier in 1991.

Not only can you see his body, you can also see the amazing things that were found with him. His bear skin cap looks quite modern. He was wearing goat skin leggings and hay stuffed shoes, a skin loincloth, a skin coat and a grass matting cloak. He was carrying a huge bow and arrows, a copper axe and a dagger and all sorts of tools in a backpack. All of these things can be seen. Unfortunately, they can’t be photographed. I hadn’t noticed this prohibition and had photographed the mummy before I realised it. So here is the mummy, which is stored in a fridge and can only be viewed through a small window.

I’m afraid it’s a terrible photo, but once I had realised it wasn’t supposed to be photographed at all I obviously could take a better one. So this is the best I could do, with all the reflections in the windows of people behind me.

The museum is quite extensive and on several floors, explaining the origin of all the things he had and where they might have come from. There a versions made by the scientists to show what his belongings looking like when made today. I found the backpack particularly interesting. It had a wooden frame that looked quite like todays serious backpacks, and was thought to carry a large netting bag. 

There is also a life sized waxwork of what they think he looked like, using evidence from his mummy and from his DNA.

He was about my height, and the longbow he was carrying is a good deal taller.

We spent quite a while in the museum, there’s a lot to read about and it’s all very accessible and easy to understand, as well as being in Italian, German and English.

We walked back the way we had come to the Piazza Erbe and the market, which I once again failed to photograph, and turned down the street towards the Dominican Church, because I wanted to see the frescos there. 

The Church dedicated to St Dominic is what remains of a Dominican monastery, which is known to have existed since 1272. It is of gothic structure with some 14th century frescoes, and is mostly wonderfully austere. (That’s a baroque ceiling painting which I don’t like in the bit of the church that can be seen behind the organ.)

There are the remains of the 14th century frescos in the church itself, but what I had come to see was the St John chapel, entirely frescoed in 1330 in the style of the Scrivegni chapel in Padua, and done by painters of the school of Giotto.

It’s very hard to photograph, so though I took a lot of photos, I couldn’t get a good one of the whole place. The whole chapel is covered in scenes from the Bible or the lives of saints. The ceiling is covered in stars, and painted structural features enclosing medallions of busts of the prophets.

Many of the panels are damaged, especially the lower ones, but there is still much to see. I think I would need a detailed explanation of many of the panels, though some are obvious.

The centre one above is obviously an annunciation. But I’m far from sure about the top and bottom ones. 

I particularly liked the panel below, of the flight into Egypt. This is a master painter, with a sense of humour.

If you are able to make this one big enough, you can see that Mary and Joseph are very obviously having a quarrel. He is shouting at her, and she had a face like thunder. The donkey just looks long-suffering - I get the impression he has heard it all before! 

As my back was starting to complain about the standing about, we stopped to rest it and have a quick coffee. Then we bought lunch sandwiches, giving ourselves 45 minutes to see the cathedral and make a start on our sandwiches before meeting our group under a big tree outside the cathedral. Unfortunately, the cathedral turned out to be closed for a wedding, so I never managed to see the second lot of frescos. We remained on a bench outside, hoping the wedding would soon be over and eating our sandwiches, but the wedding was still taking place as we left.

After we had met our group and found our way back to the bus, we were driven to the cable car station so we could take the cable car up to Soprabolzano. The cable car was one of the biggest ones I have been in, easily holding 16 of us as well as several other people, and the views on the way up were amazing.

It was quite a long trip, as Soprabolzano is 1000m above Bolzano. Once at Soprabolzano, we were able to get out of the cable car and straight into the train for Collabo. This little train crosses the Renon plateau, stopping at several tiny stations on the way to Collabo. Just as on the bus, you have to press a button to let the driver know you want to get off at the next stop. 

The plateau is largely covered with small farms, and we passed hay making and lots of cows and goats. At Collabo, we met our bus, which drove us to a place where we could walk a fairly short distance to see what are referred to locally as ‘earth pyramids’. They’re nothing like pyramids really, they’re spires of soft rock which are preserved because of the cap of hard rock on top of them. 

They have to be viewed from the opposite side of the valley because they aren’t very stable, but I hope my expanded photo shows at least some of the caps of hard rock. I had to use maximum zoom as the other side of the valley is quite far away. If the cap of hard rock falls off, the spires are soon eroded by wind and rain and disappear.

After this, the bus took us to a nice café where we had coffee (in my case) or beer (most of the men) and Apple strudel with cream and ice cream. Then it was quite a long journey back to Molveno and the hotel. It’s another 8.30 morning tomorrow, as we go to Lake Garda.

Friday July 8th 2022

It’s going to be difficult to select photos today, there are so many interesting ones and today they all arrived on the iPad so I don’t need to email myself anything.

Today we drove to visit Trento, which is a very ancient town somewhat south of Molveno. My plan of sitting on the other side of the bus did not work, as I was still on the sunny side - and it was very hot and sunny all day. We have to wear masks in the bus, so it was very hot and uncomfortable.

Trento was originally a Celtic settlement inhabited by Rhaetian tribes, and was conquered in the first century AD by the Romans and called Tridentum. It was an important stop on the Roman road from Verona to Innsbruck. After the fall of the Roman Empire, it was conquered by various peoples, and eventually became part of the Holy Roman Empire, and by the 14th century, it was part of Austria. It was ruled over by prince-bishops, and in the 16th century was the site of the Council of Trent, which, in response to Martin Luther, aimed to condemn the principals and doctrines of Protestantism and clarify the doctrines of the Catholic Church. I learned about this in history, though I doubt anybody still does. I had no idea that ‘Trent’ was in fact Trento in Italy though.

The prince-bishops governed the province of Trento until the Napoleonic era, after which that part of Italy was sometimes part of Italy and sometimes part of the Hapsburg empire. After World War 1, the area was annexed to Italy. 

Our bus dropped us beside the Piazza Dante, and we walked through the town to begin our visit in the main square, housing the cathedral and the Neptune fountain. The fountain dates from 1769, and may be dedicated to Neptune because the Roman name of the city, Tridentum, may be associated with Neptune's trident.  

You can see it’s somewhat baroque in style. I failed to photograph it without people - the square is quite busy and full of groups of tourists. That’s the cathedral behind the fountain, where we went next. 

The original cathedral was built between the 9th and 10th century on the site of a 4th century basilica, and is very plain and austere and much more to my taste than the one we saw yesterday. 

This is the rose window over the main entrance. The fresco looks old but I couldn’t find any information about it, possibly because the cathedral is currently undergoing restoration. There seemed to be little other artwork (which might also be because of the restoration) but I certainly admired the plain and simple architecture. The square itself is full of beautiful buildings, and one of them on the corner is decorated with frescos, though they are somewhat faded now. 

Not far from the cathedral square we found the underground remains of the original Roman city of Tridentum. These extensive remains were discovered during restoration and extension of the nearby theatre, which started in 1990. 

The site apparently demonstrates a historical sequence from the foundation of the town, through the Roman period, into the medieval period through to a Renaissance palace and 19th and 20th century buildings. But we concentrated on the Roman remains. 

This is Paul walking on the remains of an ancient Roman pavement. I was amazed we were allowed to walk on it, in fact I had to be invited to do so by the room guardian, I would have thought being walked on by visitors would damage it. But I suppose the museum doesn’t get that many visitors, there were only 2 other people there during the hour or so we were inside and the museum staff far outnumbered the visitors. 

We were able to admire the remains of drains, Roman water pipes and the hypocaust under one of the houses. And there were a couple of mosaics, but they were rather fragmentary. There some beautiful ceramics, some containing the remains of food, particularly oyster shells and grains. And, because there had been a glassworks, there was some Roman glass.

After this, we walked through the town. The historic centre is full of beautiful old buildings. I could easily post several, but most are in this renaissance style.

There are many buildings of this style in the city centre and the only reason I didn’t photograph more was that my back was bad again and I didn’t want to stop. I did photograph one with a very high relief of an Annunciation in the side of it, a thing I have never seen before on a building, but it isn’t a very good photo.

We walked on to the castle, the Castello del Buonconsiglio, which was started during the 13th century. We didn’t visit the tower, which was of that earliest date, but we did visit the Castelvecchio, the medieval castle daring from the 13th - 15th centuries, as well as the 16th century renaissance palace. 

The older parts of the castle housed the museum, with finds dating back to prehistoric times, with stone axes and arrowheads. Other rooms had later finds from the Rhaetian tribes, which were surprisingly sophisticated. I liked these two jugs so much I would have been happy to take them home!

We passed on through history, with some more Roman glass and then medieval relics. These were mostly religious, frescos, altarpieces and reliquaries. Then we passed into the renaissance period, when the castle became a renaissance palace. There was a wonderful loggia with a superb view over the city.

This led into the Bishops Hall, which has a painted frieze with a succession of portraits of the prince bishops as well as those of the emperors.

It’s unfortunate that we couldn’t recognise a single one! I included this photo partly because of the amazing ceiling. And partly because we liked the carpet - that’s another thing to wrap up and take home!

I couldn’t photograph the friezes and ceilings of the 3 really spectacular rooms because there was an exhibition of Venetian 18th century paintings in them. The paintings were all hung on very high stands which obscured the ceilings and the friezes, which was a pity. My back was so bad I had little time for the Venetian paintings - I don’t like the baroque anyway. Not that the friezes would have necessarily been any better, but it would have been nice to see the rooms as they were intended to be seen.

The most spectacular ceiling we saw was in the loggia on the way out.

It was very crowded all the time, so impossible to get a photo without hoards of people.

We paid a swift visit to the Museum cafeteria so I could get some water, as it was very hot indeed and we had failed to bring any, stupidly. Then we had to walk back through the town back to Piazza Dante to meet our bus. We were early so took the opportunity to have a quick coffee. I can’t think why I failed to photograph Dante’s statue, because it is huge and right in the middle. My only excuse is my bad back and the fact that I was desperate to sit down.

Once in the bus, we set off for Levico, where there is a really charming lake, which is very well used by the people of the town. 

It was good to relax beside the lake, and after we had wandered for a while, we lay on the grass in the shade and ate ice cream. Then it was back in the bus to the hotel. Tomorrow it’s an even earlier start, so I must not sit up too late writing this blog.

Thursday July 7th 2022

Today we visited the Mendola Funicular, then the picturesque village of Caldaro, and finally a winery.

It was very hot, so my feet and ankles have swollen quite badly, and my back has been painful, making things very difficult. I took lots of photos on the iPhone, but they don’t seem to be arriving on the iPad so I’m not sure how much I can post here, as the best ones are missing. If all else fails, I’ll need to email them to myself, but that seems ridiculous. It’s never happened before so I might need to resort to using the camera again, which would be a shame as the iPhone takes much better photos.

It took about an hour to drive to the funicular, and I was on the sunny side of the bus so I took no photos as it would have been directly into the sun. We travelled through vineyards and apple orchards in the valley floor at first, surrounded by the steep rocky summits on all sides. Then we climbed up into the little village of St Anton for the funicular up to the Mendola Pass.

I should perhaps explain that this part of Italy was originally part of the Austro-Hungarian empire until after the First World War so German is the first language, rather than Italian. It’s known as the South Tyrol.  We soon got used to seeing all the signs in both languages but German is first as a slightly larger proportion of the population is German speaking. 

There was quite a queue for the funicular, it was very crowded and busy, as it’s very popular. It was first built in 1903 though of course it has been refurbished many times.it’s nearly 2 and a half kilometres long, and very steep - 64 degrees at the steepest point. Unfortunately there were so many people in the early morning that we were packed in like sardines so there was no possibility of taking photos.

The view from the top was very good, though it didn’t photograph well. 

We wandered for a little looking at the alpine style buildings, the best of which I think is the Villa Camille, built in 1886 by a very wealthy Jewish banker in memory of his wife. It is now a shop. 

I did go into the shop, which had some interesting metalwork as well as some small antiques, but there was nothing I really wanted. So we went back to the terrace overlooking the view and sat and drank mineral water and admired the view. 

It was less crowded on the way down so I took some photos but they aren’t very good. 

It was only a few minutes drive to the village of Caldaro, which is a popular tourist destination. This is part of the main square.

As it wasn’t yet lunch time, we went to have a look inside the church, which is one side of the main square, next to the town hall. We did not like the interior.

From what I could gather from a brief perusal of the Italian guide book, the interior decorations mostly dated from the 1700s, with some later additions in the early 1800s. I would have described it as a baroque horror - but then I really don’t like the baroque.

We wandered the town a little, as it was really very pretty. This was one of the streets

For lunch we made our way back to the main square where we found a restaurant for a light lunch. The rain descended in torrents just as we were about to leave, so we sheltered under the café umbrellas for a while as I unpacked the raincoat and umbrella. The shower was heavy but fortunately it didn’t last too long and we got back in the bus for our visit to the Rotari winery, to learn about the making of sparkling wine.

My back was so bad by the time we got there that I’m amazed I took anything in from the tour we had. Moreover, I don’t think I’ve ever gone up and down so many stairs in such a short time in my life. And very few of them had bannisters. You obviously need to be young and fit to work there! Interestingly enough, it’s a wine Co-operative, which accounts for its enormous size.

The grapes are picked by hand, pressed, and have a first fermentation in huge steel tanks. The tanks were so tall, it was impossible to photograph their full height, and there were hundreds of them.

In spring, sugar and yeast is added and the wine is bottled with crown caps and stored horizontal for the second fermentation. Then the bottles are turned daily and finally stored upside down so the sedimentation gathers in the neck of the bottle. Once the sediment has gathered, the upside down bottles go into a cooling solution so the sediment is frozen. The bottles are turned the right way up and the crown cap removed, and the pressure from the wine ejects the frozen sediment. 

We were then taken to taste the wine, a process rather wasted on me as I’m not a wine drinker - or indeed, a drinker of any alcohol. We were also given a red wine to taste, which Paul liked.

On the way back to the hotel for dinner, I couldn’t resist taking more photos of the amazing landscape.

Now it’s time for bed as we must be up at 7 tomorrow for a visit to Trentino and Levico. Heaven knows how my back is going to survive it.