West to East Traverse of Northern Italy, Cinque Terre, Milan. Lake Como, Italian & Swiss Alps and Dolomites

June 11 – July 1, 2024

This adventure began in Genoa, home of Christopher Columbus, built on a sea shore shelf below surrounding mountains. Capital of the Italian Rivera with many palaces and museums, Genoa was on the maritime circuit with Pisa, Venice, Amalfi, home to the world’s greatest sailors. On this trip I finally realized the difference between a palace and a castle. The former just a wealthy person’s opulent home, while a castle is in addition to this, an isolated fortress. In Genoa and later in Milan are many palaces side by side on the streets. Many built in near medieval times and still occupied by the heirs. After two nights, a tour of the city’s sights including the upper city we set on an all-day drive to the Cinque Terre (five lands) park along the Mediterranean coast. Notably, on this OAT Pre-Trip to Genoa and Cinque Terre there were only 3 travelers!

(Photos: A link near the end of a section will take you to the photo album related to the section, while interspersed links take you to photos related to the narrative context. - use Cntl or Shift click to show in new tab or window respectively – otherwise click the back arrow to return to this text)

Friday, June 14; We drive to the Cinque Terre (Five Lands), an Italian National Park, northern most village Monterosso. The route seems to have more tunnels than Japan. Five villages about a mile apart on the cliff-bound Italy northwest coast. All are difficult and a couple nearly impossible to reach by car, instead mostly by train and by boat on the water. Indeed as we approach climbing down the mountain by van, there is road side car parking for a mile or more out of town. If you own a car in town you have to take a bus up to your parking space! A popular tourist activity is backpacking between the five villages, perhaps stopping at B&Bs along the way, though the whole trek can be done in a day. I got my first swim in the Mediterranean. Lots of folks on the beach though the beach is rather gravely more than sand so not first class. Late in the day we took the train to Riomaggiore, southernmost of the five. In order N to S Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, Riomaggiore. Lots of interesting, but hot sun and steep climbing, hiking over the following couple days. On the day before departure to Lecco we went by 4x4 into the mountains east and to La Spezia for lunch at a local “farm” house. On the evening before departure there was a fun concert on the beach. Also I learned that our hotel, Alberto Degli Amici, was built with upper floors climbing the slope of a hill, with a beautiful two-level roof garden at the top. By chance there was one other person in this garden when I visited. As the conversation went, he from the UK and very interested in space exploration though professionally no involvement – in stark contrast to myself having a career in spacecraft design. His interest to the extent that he said he had traveled to Boca Chica, Texas to watch the most recent flight, Flight 3 I believe, of the SpaceX Starship. Wow! We had a great conversation.

Monday, June 17; Drive 4 hours to Lecco on Lake Como. Here we join a dozen others for the main trip across Northern Italy. OAT guides on these trips are consistently good, but Lisa Lafranco was the best! Did I write that before?! Next day a scenic cruise north on Lake Como, Mandello del Lario, Oliveto Lario, Olcio, Lierna and return by train. Wednesday we drove south to Milan. Milan the industrial city of Italy, but also the fashion capital and home of the Milan Cathedral, Often called Duomo by locals, 2nd largest in Europe excluding the Basilica at the Vatican. Many travelers visited inside the cathedral, I and a couple others visited the Da Vinci Museum inside the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. The mall itself is more than spectacular with every name I could imagine, Rolex, Chanel, Vuitton, Prada, The Devil, etc. etc. Our main goal in Milan was to visit Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper which of course was impressive and inspirational.

Thursday we went by train to Villa Monastero at Varenna, a palace turned tourist attraction and conference center. Among the conferences organized at Villa Monastero there is the "Enrico Fermi" International School of Physics, organized by the Italian Physics Society since 1953. The school has hosted speeches by over thirty-four Nobel Prize winners.

Friday, June 21; The previous day we drove north and east from Lecco to Tirano. Today visiting a mountain side village of Borgo Baruffini north of Tirano and just a couple miles south of the Swiss border. This village is nearly self-sufficient, growing apples, potatoes, lots of vegetables and soooo many flowers. Also buckwheat is popular – in my Pennsylvania early childhood we grew buckwheat only on land that was too poor and rocky or steep to grow anything else. Annual competition selects the most prolific flower display. At a local hosted lunch we had buckwheat pancakes, but somehow cooked for about ½ hour as contrasted to the 5 – 10 min in Pennsylvania and not nearly as good! At the end of WWII this area was economically devastated so a common occupation was smuggling tobacco and other contraband from Switzerland, just over the hill to be traded in Italy. We met one old lady who had participated in the smuggling by backpack.

Saturday we were intended to take the Bernina Red Train to Switzerland, however a Friday rain and flooding had washed out the tracks, as a result we diverted to making the same trip by bus. For all of this trip we are being told of wettest year in memory and rain almost every day of the last 60. Fortunately is seemed to be giving us a break with only moderate showers. However, now late June and every stream and river showed a torrent of really fast water. Reminiscent of my active white water kayaking days, except for kayaking one needs pools of calm water below rapids to recover. In this place there were no pools, just a continuous rush of water for miles.

Unusual of the Red Train is that the mountain pass climbs too fast for the typical train so there was spiral circular track to allow the train to gain elevation gradually. Genoa2Tirano Album

Sunday, June 23; Today we drove on to Sulzano on the east shore of Lake Iseo stopping for two nights at the very pleasant Hotel Rivalgo on the lake shore. Next morning, with a couple other travelers, I went by ferry to a significant island, Montisola, in the middle of the lake, rented bicycles and rode 5 – 7 miles around the periphery seeing the sights. There are several smaller Islands large enough to support only one palace. Sulzano is the location on one of Christo’s temporary and radically unusual art creations. Here in 2016 he built a Floating Pier bridge across the lake to Montisola, and smaller on to one of the miniature islands. Back in the US Christo and accomplice Jeanne-Claude are famous for hanging a red curtain across the valley, Rifle Gap, between two mountains in Colorado, 1972. Later, 1991, they erected 3,100 umbrellas in a mountain pass, Grapevine or Tejon Pass, 80 miles north of Los Angeles. Having traversed the Grapevine frequently for weekend white water kayaking on California’s Kern River, I and some friends got to see and drive through the umbrella art. Apparently Christo repeated the umbrella stunt somewhere in Japan. Tuesday we drove east and north to Trento skirting the southern edge of Lake Garda, Italy’s largest lake. Several months later, returning to my north Maui, Hi. windsurfing venue several folks informed me Lake Garda is a popular windsurfing destination. I was unaware, and did not get close enough to see evidence of this on the June trip. A couple Maui regulars had sailed at Garda.

The Grand Hotel Trento is a classic older 4 star hotel with 8 – 10 story winding stairway with center open shaft over the lobby all the way up. Also they have great breakfast. A main attraction in Trento is Buonconsiglio Castle and its Eagle Tower with paintings the “Cycle of the Months” frescoes. The castle with many rooms of frescos and paintings. The Tower requires a separate ticket and entry appointment time. The Trento Cable Car rises over the Adige River 400 m to a great view point to see the city. Two mysterious smoke stacks seem isolated from any other buildings, industry, whatever, near the bottom of the cable car at the foot of the Dolomite Alps? Not apparent at street level, I visited an extensive Roman ruin beneath the city Trento that has been excavated and laid out for tourists.

Food on the trip is generally good but not as praiseworthy as I found on a trip to Rome in 2001. Maybe partly due to the generous expense account on that trip. A lot of pasta, lasagna, and risotto. Few days ago in Lecco we had steak tartare, a 1^st for me. Later we are finding a type of pork called speck, smoked, cured, and sliced very thin, to be quite popular.

Thursday, June 27; Overland travel to Bressanone (Brixen) through some rain and lots of great Alpine scenery. Enroute, lunch at Santa Magdalena and a visit to a bucolic dairy farming region. As a farmer in early life I am always interested in the agriculture of a visit. In this area it’s all green grass everywhere one can see. At the dairy barn visit, our local guide told of cows voluntarily lining up to enter the robotic laser guided milking stall. This was so foreign to the dairy I know that I came away disappointed in not asking to hear and see much more of the operation. The countryside is all hills and grows only grass or hay within our site. What do the cows eat in winter when it’s all snow covered?

Over the next couple days I was able to discern a few secrets usually kept from the tourists. Most of the hillsides are so steep to prohibit any usual farm machinery so they say hay is cut with the biblical, or at least 18th century, scythe. I didn’t see this cutting but did see workers rolling dried hay down hill with hand rakes for collection at the bottom. Also at one point we came across a walk-behind engine powered hay mower specially built wide and low for use on a steep hillside. I learned that if this green grass is allowed to mature, go to seed and wither dead, next year it will look more like scruffy weeds and grass. So as much as practical in all areas where the Dolomite tourists visit, the grass in mowed each summer …… and the government promotes and subsidizes the mowing. Regular mowing was also said to help in avoiding avalanches. Though we didn’t see many cows, they help to maintain the bucolic environ, hence the government subsidizes a farmer for each cow added to the herd. This is not necessarily bad, harming the environment, or subterfuge, as the area is beautiful, and tourism is a business, but perhaps just different from the average tourist impression.

I came away disappointed, not really understanding the agriculture. Some time is needed talking to a real farmer rather than a tour guide! What do the cows eat in winter when all this lush grass is under 3 feet of snow. In New Zealand grass all year works as no snow, grass growing, and suitable weather for cattle to graze. In Pennsylvania much of the summer’s activity was in growing and storing what the cattle eat in winter. Feed grains, oats, wheat, barley, and cured hay and silage – all to get acceptable milk production. In Italy I see only hay being harvested. Are all the other feeds imported from the low lands? Are the cattle herds transported to low lands where these feeds are available in winter. I did see occasional tractors and larger farm implements carefully hidden from tourists behind larger farm buildings. But around Brixen we saw no crops, only lush green grass.

Perhaps there is no agriculture! I am reminded that on my first OAT adventure in East Africa, one couple of travelers were owner-operators of a farm in Eastern Pennsylvania. The farm in the past a productive agriculture enterprise, but now operated as a museum or theme park for city tourists, school class outings etc. Maybe the Blixen and Dolomite surroundings are more a big ski and tourist enterprise with a couple dairy farms positioned for summer visits. In retrospect I only recall seeing cows in a couple locations.

Brixen just a few miles from the Austria border many folks speak German (72%) or Italian or both[1]. A neat village with a very large open city square, courtyard, what seemed to me on the north portion with Neustift Augustinian Abbey

On Friday we make a long bus excursion to Mt. Plose. Lots of winding narrow road, heavy traffic and in the 100ft spaces between two tourist buses half dozen bicycles keeping pace. Sometimes the bicycles passing the buses. Many ski lifts along the way. Ski lift ticket money goes to government and is then doled to lift operators one-by-one as people ride the lift. We rode up the Plose gondola and hiked around the scenic Dolomite views at the top. At top of the gondola was a bicycle attached to the center of a cylindrical track, the cylinder axis horizontal. There must be a name for this, but just look at the picture. I believe I had no trouble winning the age contest in this OAT group. I decided to try, completely ignoring the lack of knowledge or experience[2]. The bike and rider comprise a pendulum, perhaps smartly driven by the rider. Some clumsiness at the pedal reversal on the back swing of the pendulum allowed me to seriously break the skin and bloody up my left shin on the cleats of the pedal! Not a real big deal, but lack of readily available paper towel (bandage) or tape to quench the bleeding caused some excitement. Worse, our competent whole trip guide, Elisa Lafranco, had to worry for 15 min that this might be serious. Sadly, I learned she was even compelled to write a little report!

Sunday, June 30; Final leg of the trip out of the Alps and down to the low lands close to Venice for next day departure to US. Along the way we stopped at Mogliano Veneto for at a tour of an apple orchard. Apples orchards compete with vineyards all over northern Italy where we traveled. However, to this traveler, very different from the typical fruit orchard character with trees, fruit high out of reach and relatively clear in the lower 4 – 7ft. from ground. Instead, the “trees” are more like bushes, with a single straight stem 6 – 8ft tall in the center, and foliage and fruit on lesser branches from the ground up. From a distance it’s possible to mistake an apple orchard for a vineyard. The trees are “bread” and trimmed to this for easy harvest and perhaps higher yield. Tomatoes bred and harvested in US and Mexico for easy transport to market, hence rendered virtually unedible, come to mind. An example in this photo, or earlier in our journey at Borgo Baruffini. Final night in the country outside Venice at Villa Condulmer, maybe somewhat dated golf resort hotel, but pretty elegant, boasting Ronald and Nancy Regan as past guests. Do look at the photo gallery at the preceding link. Sulzano2Brixen Album

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[1] The primary languages spoken in Brixen, Italy are German (72%), Italian(26%), and Ladin(1%): Hence the city known by two names Brixen or Bressanone. South Tyrol is a multilingual region due to its history as part of the Austrian Empire until World War I, when German was the dominant language. The demographics of the region were also significantly changed by the Italianization of South Tyrol and the settlement of Italians after 1918

[2] With a little thought and practice I think this would be quite fun and easy. Pedal forward as hard as you are capable until the stall. At the stall point on the forward swing one should start pedaling backward as hard as possible to the reverse stall. At the reverse stall, begin pedaling forward again hard as possible. On a regular bicycle pedaling backward is not connected to the wheel and does nothing. We think forward pedaling is the same on the Plose bike is same as any bike. What is not presently clear is what drive connection is made in reverse. Are the bike wheel and pedal crank solidly connected in both directions, or is there some sort of torque or speed actuated clutch in the reverse, or both, directions?