The Hills Are Alive

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Our last breakfast was the same as every other day in Venice: juice, ham, bread, fruit, cheese and a different cake each day. Yum! We packed up our things and then bade farewell to Nicola, our kind host, and walked to the Celestia vaporetto stop. We didn’t wait long for a vaporetto and enjoyed our last water views of Venice. We got to the hire car place and waited. And waited. And waited. We finally got our car half an hour after the time for which we had booked it.

We decided to drive north, trying to manage the roads, the signs and the rain! We made it to Treviso around lunchtime, so we spent a while trying to find parking and trying to figure out how to pay for parking. Finally we made it and in the pouring rain my dad and I went to find food. We settled with McDonalds, so I broke my own rules about having chainstore take out on holidays. We took the food back to the car. When dad was standing outside the car eating, a couple came up and the man asked “do you speak English?” Dad’s immediate response was “a little”! And then he realised what he said and corrected himself, “no, wait, actually a lot”. Hilarious.

We headed further north and on the way were pulled over for a routine traffic stop. In my dad’s best Italian he said “parlo inglese”, which means “I speak English” to the policeman that pulled us over instead “Do you speak English?” Both the policeman and I were very amused and we were allowed to drive on after he looked at one of our passports.

We finally arrived in the Belluno having taken in the beauty of the surrounding Dolomites as we drove a long. It took a little while to find a hotel, but we found one. It was very nice - usually for business people. We had separate rooms (yay) and they were very modern, clean and simple. We went for a walk along the main road on which we were staying, stopping for gelato on the way. It was actually chilly outside! When we got back to the hotel, we spent some time planning for the rest of our trip and I searched out hotels in Trento. I found three and finally we chose one, so I rang them as my parents listened on. The receptionist didn’t speak English, so we started in German, switched to Spanish (me) and Italian (her) and then added some English and German in. It was all very confusing and took a little while, but the hotel was book. My parents were rather amused at the multi-lingual conversation.

We went to a nearby restaurant called Daj Dam for dinner. What a little gem it turned out to be. They had a good mix of meals including pasta, seafood and meat dishes as well as good wine and dairy free gelato. We were very pleased and satisfied, so if you’re ever in Belluno…

x Sarah

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