Here I go down that wrong road again

19 September

If you start in the right place, you have a good chance of ending in the right place.

With about as early a start as we could ever make, we set off for Verona. But the very helpful book of Italian wines that I happened to find at a charity book sale, insisted that one tries the wine of the Trentino region of the Aldige valley, and because Caldaro seems to be the most recommended village, we decided to try and find a cellar there for some wine tasting. We were clearly not the only tourists with this in mind, but with some investigations and asking about, we eventually found a Wine Centre, where some helpful souls enlightened Niel on all the wines of the region. He found the Lagrein and Vernach particularly good, but was also impressed with the Pinot Grigio and Muller-Thergau.

From Caldaro it was a simple drive on the autostrada to Verona. Simple. That's when the fun started. We were armed with a map of Italy, a printed condensed map of Verona that clearly showed the major roads, a printed map of the area where our accommodation is, with strategic street names, a phone that supposedly has a GPS, and we were delighted to have a laptop with fully functioning Italian sim card for internet access, which means on the spot access to maps. And for some extra measure, we had one male who will try any direction, and won't ask, and one female who needs to be stationary to figure things out first. And when that female experiences an internal GPS failure, well - you struggle a little. It took as about two hours to eventually get so very close to a point of actually knowing where to go next, only to be stopped by the police because of road closures. The one bit of road that would have made our life so easy, was closed for some bike race. But the policeman being as friendly as police can be, told us in his best Italian, that we should just turn around and 'primo destra'. And it's not as if I had been listening to Italian language lessons for nothing over these last few months. Of course I know that destra means right.

Well - we're told that the road we then found ourselves on, was a road that was used in the first world war. We started off waiting at a robot for a good 5 minutes. When it eventually turned green, we understood why it had stayed red for so long. About 1 km of cobblestone road that is so narrow that, at times, I wanted Niel to do that cool thing that our car could do with its mirrors - turn it in so the car can squeeze through narrower alleys. But we managed to get through this first world war street unambushed, and found ourselves on a normal road. Surely it's simple from there. And it was. In no time we got to the circle where all we needed to do was pick Via San Giuliana. So we picked San Giuliana, and found ourselves on an even narrower road. But we were brave (or just extremely stupid), and continued until we get the correct number. Exhale. Except that the people on the other end of the intercom ended up trying to tell us that we should go back the way we came, and from the little church at the round-about, the second gate on the right.

And even though I would love to laboriously share the frustrations of our search, to cut a long story short, the San Giuliana that we picked was a Stradello, which I'm pretty sure means a small road. And had we picked the next street off the circle, our accommodation was a mere 50 meters further along the very normal road.

To make up for the almost three hours of painful driving, mostly oblivious of any form of direction, the accommodation is great. It has stunning views of the old city centre of Verona, with a lovely room, and promises of a good supper. So we took the correct (and very quick) way back down to the city centre, and did a quick tour of Verona at dusk, which is really very beautiful. And the minute I set foot in the old town centre, I realised how much I loved being in these beautiful old towns. There is a sense of belonging, with people happily strolling down narrow streets, pizzerias and trattorias making the hungry feel at home, and from the young, to the fashion-clad grand,  to the very old peddling along on their bicycles.

I'm still really struggling to pick my favorite part of Italy. Perhaps it is just the part that I find myself at that point in time.