Italia - Part Uno
The view from a morning hike in the Dolomites.
So… we dropped the ball. Here’s what happened. A little over a month ago we were just about ready to post about the first half of our Italy adventures. We typed up a detailed summary but held off on posting for a day. Then, as luck would have it, our computer crashed and all our work was lost. Since that day, we have bounced around Italy, traveled in Spain, flew to Germany, and now we’re on our way to the Netherlands and the UK. We haven’t done a Workaway since Italy but have instead chosen to be tourists for a while, taking the pictures you would expect tourists might take, and eating gelato, or brezels, or tapas as anyone else would. As we continued to travel, many days we kept our phones tucked away and chose instead to experience the places we visited without our cameras. At one point Pat even lost his phone running to catch a bus in Spain, and so the few photos we did take were lost (in addition to some old photos of our cat Kafka that we will miss even more).
As time went on, we discussed jumping back in to update the blog. However, there was something trite about a post describing how we felt when saw the statue of David or what we thought about when we roamed the ruins of Pompeii. While those experiences were formative and awe inspiring, we didn’t know if we had anything new to say about a place that millions visit every day. The experiences didn’t feel unique to share, even if we might have had a unique take on it.
We will eventually post our favorite moments since we left our Workaway in Italy. Now, however, in lieu of a traditional post, we’ll include a brief bullet point summary with a few of the highlights from the first half of our Italy adventures.
-We began our visit to Italy by going directly to the Dolomites and working at a bed and breakfast run by an Italian American family.
-The B&B was in the outskirts of a small town called Feltre, a gateway right into the Italian Alps.
-Our work varied, helping out with childcare and working in the garden. We spent our free time hiking the surrounding mountains and breathing the fresh spring air. We went on runs, walked through woods, cycled to a lake, and hiked up to the nearest snowy peaks of the Dolomites.
-One morning on a hike up through a nearby village, we came across an old castle turned into a school. A group of school children were marching in a circle under the direction of what I assume to be there teachers. They were marching to Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall Part II”. It was a surreal experience.
-Our hosts provided us with a small flat with a kitchen and prepared lunch for us every day we worked. They usually made fresh pasta dishes which were the best pasta dishes we had ever tasted in our lives.
-Italy gave us our first taste (literally and figuratively) of slow food. Our hosts had connections with an olive oil producer in Sicily that would drop off 20 L canisters whenever he was in the area. They picked up gigantic jugs of Proseco from local vineyards in the area and bottled their own wine. Every meal, no matter how simple, was cooked thoughtfully and slowly.
-On our first day off, we took a trip to Padova where we visited one of the oldest universities in Europe and saw the first original medical operating theater. In all our time in Italy, the best gelato we had was in Padova, an opinion which would likely be scoffed at by locals and tourists alike.
-On our way back from Padova, the doors to our train car wouldn’t open at our final stop. We stood in confusion as a group of Italian men in the same predicament as us argued with the train conductor until eventually someone arranged a ride for us back to Feltre.
-We took a trip to Venice and roamed around the winding streets over canals and visited the incredible Saint Mark’s. The visit made us feel like we had entered the most extraordinary dying city.
-After nearly three weeks, we left our Workaway tucked into the peaceful mountainside to begin a ten day excursion through Florence, Sienna, Rome, and Naples.
The view from our window at our Workaway.
Beautiful spring flowers blooming.
Explorations through the nearby villages.
Feltre covered in clouds.
Typical local homes in the Feltre area.
Views of the mountains during our bike rides.
Trees planted by our hosts great grandfather.
Spending a day pushing Noah in a stroller around Feltre as a job.
Snowy peaks seen from Feltre.
Coats of Arms of past students and professors at University of Padova
Central courtyard of University of Padova, founded in 1222
A park and canal in Padova surrounded by statues of prominent Padovans.
A final hike into the alps. It was warm at the bottom when we started about 2000 meters below.