Do you know how hard it is to do this every day … on vacation?!!

May 14, day… 7?

Rain in the forecast. We were planning a drive up the coast to check out a couple of little towns not far away but with such a gloomy forecast we decided on a day of meditation and reflection. A bit of time to contemplate our goals and achievements, our dreams and fears… sounds deep right? Well it’s also known as a day avoiding the rain (that in the end lasted all of 10 minutes), reading on the patio, staring off into the middle distance across the lake, drinking wine, talking to the lizards wondering how we can make this into “every day life”… sigh.

May 15… Sunday drivers…

Today we actually do drive north along the shoreline to a little town called Malcesini. Starting out with the famous plummet down the mountain until we hit Torri del Benaco and the lake and make a hard right turn to the north. Malcesini is about 24 kilometers up the road. Water on the left and hotels, pizza shops, apartments and lots of who know what miscellaneous on the right.

Between the road and the water along almost the entire 24 kilometers, is rocks and boulders and a few short docks. This is what’s known as ‘the beach’ around here. People are sprawled out on the rocks like Lizards. Some have towels but at least half of them are just flat on their backs, or faces, on the rocks. Whatever works for you I guess.

And there are motorcycles and scooters… whole herds of them! They squeeze past us along the center line in very orderly and respectful disregard for the speed limit or the rules of the road. Traffic just moves smoothly along.

Malcesine is a charming ancient town. A rabbit warren of winding narrow streets lined with buildings painted in a multitude of shades of yellow, red, blue, orange… and lots of gelato shops! Yay! And I see my first cat since we arrived. There is a noticeable absence of cats for some reason… and if you know me you know that I don’t miss getting a picture of a street cat when I’m in Italy…

There is a pretty cool little castle and a weird little natural history museum. Well worth the 5 euro to tour and learn a few things like, how deep the lake is and what kind of mites and worms and stuff live in the rocks on the beach…

We have lunch at a little sandwich/salad/pastry shop. Again there are only 2 people working all the prep, kitchen, service, busing, etc. I have to wonder if Italy is having the same trouble finding people to work service industry jobs as they come out of the covid years.

True to our plan, more or less, we spend some time just sitting and watching and listening and smelling the world go by. There was a fellow busking near the entrance to the castle/museum playing a finger style blues and singing in English which made for an interesting effect with his very Italian accent.

Heading ‘home’ we dash into the little grocery in Torri del Benaco for some chicken and asparagus to make for our last dinner at Lake Garda.

Tomorrow morning we head for Cortona… our ‘home town’ in Italy.

5/16

Cortona here we come!

We plug in where we are and where we want to go in Cortona. (Parcheggio dello Spirito Santo, yes, the parking lot of the holy spirit.)

G-maps shows us a route that is completely new and has absolutely no roads on it that we are familiar with at all. Great! Fire up, let’s gooo!

We profess blind faith to Googlia (the name we have given the voice in the Google Maps directions ap. In Italian it actually would be pronounced something almost like ‘Julia’…)

Once we get off the little one lane, two way roads and finally on to the A4 autostrada, its smooth sailing for a while. Other than the trucks that is. The autostrada is packed with trucks, and they’re BIG trucks, like American big trucks. Sometimes even tandems… I don’t recall ever seeing so many trucks and certainly not so many so big. We have never approached Cortona from this direction before and we just have to keep the faith in Googlia.

Well about 3 and a half hours and 3 Autogrill stops, (you know coffee, lunch, gas, uh… other) we are sneaking up on Cortona. Googlia takes us on some very tiny, one lane roads through farm fields, behind barns and 3 house hamlets we have never heard of. But before you know it we are pulling into the parking lot of the holy spirit. I can’t believe Googlia even knew those roads were there…

It’s been 3 years since we’ve been back to Cortona and I forgot about driving up to the piazza to unload luggages and stuff near Jeanette’s place before parking. Sooo… we have to make like sherpas and drag our bags up the hill to the town. If it was a straight staircase it would be about 200 stairs. But, it’s not stairs and it’s not straight. Part of the climb is usually escalators but only one of them was working today and when we got to the top of it a workman told us we had to turn left and take the long path around and up by the hotel because they were working on the regular path. Grumble, whine, rant, pant… we finally get to the top. And we are ‘home’ now. At least that’s what it feels like.

It is great to see Jeanette and Luciano again. And of course Daisy and Jake, the real masters of the house.

We wander around and reacquaint ourselves with our town.

We run into Jeanette a while later in the piazza della repubblica and ask her if we need to make dinner reservations somewhere considering the covid capacity restrictions and such at restaurants. Just as she is telling us that yes, we should make reservations, Carlo from Trattoria La Grotta walks by. Jeanette hollers at him, blahbedy blah blah eh?

‘Si’ he says, what’s the name?, Ferraro she says…. and presto we have reservations at 7:30 at La Grotta. It’s good to have friends who have friends.

An old favorite, Trattoria La Grotta is like a familiar kitchen and after a leisurely dinner and lots of reminiscing we toddle home to bed…