Venice to San Martino di Castrozza

We left the busy city of Venice and headed in our water taxi to meet the rest of our Wilderness Group at the Marco Polo Airport at 10am on Sunday morning.  After brief introductions we piled into two vans to begin the first leg of journey to Bassano del Grappa where we would have lunch and tour a Grappa distillery museum.  I have no picture of any of these events because my camera was left in the van :-(!  Anyway, the town was very cute and had a nice wooden bridge and there was some sort of Cod Festival going on. . .not too sure the details on that!  Lunch was in a nice restaurant and they were also preparing for a wedding so that was fun to see.  We had some prosecco with fresh strawberries!  YUM!!!  Then they brought our trays of hors d'ouevres (which Jeanna thought was lunch), then we sat and they brought a tray of meats (Jeanna again thought it was lunch), then a polenta dish (Jeanna again. . . ) and finally some pasta dish.  There was a dessert as well, but we were in a food coma by this point!

After lunch we headed to the Poli Museo della Grappa and learned about the distillation of grappa.  For those of you who have never heard of grappa it is distilled from the left over grape-pomace from wine making!  It takes 220lbs of grape-pomace to make 3-7 liters of grappa.  We then had a tasting of different kinds of grappa.  The basic is colorless and has a 40% alcohol content - pretty much it tastes like jet fuel.  Although to be fair I have not tasted jet fuel, but in my mind I think they are one and the same!  The next had a amber color because it was aged in a wooden barrel for over a year.  I am going to tell you that the aging doesn't reduce the alcohol content or the taste of jet fuel.  Then there were the infused grappas - blueberry and honey. . . better tasting.  The last was the chocolate grappa. . . now we are talking, give me some vanilla gelato with that and I could be a grappa fan!

We then got back into the van and headed up into the mountains on VERY winding roads!  Did I mention the roads had a lot of curves?  After an hour and half of motion sickness producing curves we arrived in the very alpine city of San Martino di Castrozza.  A very quaint ski town surrounded by fabulous spires of rock.

Our Hotel

 After settling in our room, we decided to take a walk into town to check it out. . .luckily we didn't have our credit cards with us so it was strictly window shopping!

A lovely stream on the way to town.

Jeanna smiling because she LOVES the mountains!

Who dressed us?  We just do this naturally :-)

You can see same of the peaks behind the clouds

Jeanna kissing the town troll for good weather!

Looking towards the mountains!

 We had a nice dinner at the hotel and tried to get sleep early in anticipation for the first hiking day.  The first hike is always one of the hardest days. . .coming from sea level and then hiking up some 2,000 ft when you start around 5000ft is a real lung buster!  The following are some pictures of the hiking terrain we experienced on our first day.

Up we go!

Beautiful Mountains Lakes

Resting a little on the first up!

You can see the peaks in the background through the clouds.

Happy Reluctant Hiker

Ms. Mountain Lover

 Scattered throughout these mountains are caves and trenches used by the Italians in the WWI to hold back the Austrians during the war.

Billy goats gruff :-)

Me at the top of that hill

Coming down on the way to lunch

We had a lovely extended lunch with lots and then had a 40 minute hike back to the hotel.  Tonight we are going out to dinner and then hit the bed early because tomorrow is the hardest hike.  Jeanna will need her rest. . . I will be taking the moderate hike tomorrow :-)!

Lake by our lunch spot