postcard 44: look who we found
Vince and Sally come to ride Vespas, drink wine, climb mountains and kayak.
We’ve seen the Matterhorn and sunrise at Cinque Terre. There’s been dolphins swimming under our boat in Split and the waterfalls in Lauterbrunnen but I still think one of my favorite sights in Europe I’ve seen yet is my parents walking through the front door of the Airbnb somewhere in the Italian countryside after 10 months apart. It’s by far the longest I’ve ever gone without seeing my dad and I am so very glad they are here.
We eat cheese and drink wine and catch up, walking down the steepest driveway I’ve ever seen, framed by wild berry bushes to the small village below us. A canal runs through it, cooling the hot summer night and filling the village with the sounds of water. We get gelatos and granitas from the ice cream shop and wander ‘till the light dies.
The house we’re staying at is old and quirky, perched on top of a massive hill. There’s a big yard for Hazelnut to run around in, multiple patios and a literal tavern in the basement where Topher and I’s shower is. I bravely kill a spider, turn on the tap and step into the stream in the dark corner. As the water runs over my feet and I adjust the temperature, my hand starts to go numb. It’s a strange feeling and I ignore it until the other one begins to feel weird when I grab the cold water tap. And then, my feet in the standing water underneath me start to tingle. I jump out, dripping water everywhere and the sensation stops. “Not to be dramatic, but I think I just got mildly electrocuted in the shower,” I say upstairs after having finished washing in the sink.
Topher tells me electrocution implies that you've died and then confirms he also got shocked in the shower, he just didn’t mention it. Sally texts the Airbnb host and Topher goes downstairs to get more data. Yes, the shower is definitely sending an electrical current through the handles. Our luck with Airbnbs is exceptional.
By the time we get to the Vespa rental shop, we’ve already driven 30 minutes farther than we thought we needed to and have almost ran over one motorcyclist, but we’re ready. We’re on the same Prosecco roads Natalie and I battled three months ago, but I’m confident. We strap on helmets emblazoned with the Italian flag and throw sunscreen in the luggage compartments of our matching mint green and white bikes. The rental guy asks if we’ve ever driven a motorcycle, gives us a very, very simple primer and then puts me in the driver’s seat. This activity was, after all, my brain child. Maybe I should try on the driveway first. I get approximately 10 feet from the front door, managing to grasp both the accelerator and brakes as hard as possible, experiencing one brief moment of terror before coming to a halting stop. Maybe this isn’t for me. Luckily Topher gets the hang of it right away and I’m clutching his waist as we wind through the Prosecco hills in no time. Our two bike procession is holding up traffic just a bit, but we make it to a vineyard with an open sign without incident. We move from sipping wine on the patio to a trattoria across the street where we eat gnocchi and lasagna under a trellis.
After spending the afternoon toodling around the countryside we pull into a gas station to fill our tanks before returning the Vespas. My card gets declined, my dad's card gets declined and by the time the machine eats Sally’s €20 note, we’ve got an audience. Fabrizio owns the wine shop around the corner and his neighbor, whose wife is American, stops to tell us he loves Mikaela Shiffrin and they take it upon themselves to solve our problem. We can either go to the next town over to find a man named Aldo who owns the gas pump, or just let the €20 go and move on. The neighbor pays for our gas with his own card and then does a circuit around town looking for change for the big bills we have left. We thank them profusely and head back to the Vespa rental place. We tell the rental guy our story and he interrupts us as we’re talking about Fabrizio with “—my cousin”. It truly is a very small world here.
My dad and Sally’s favorite wine is Amarone, a red that’s made two hours away near Verona. Their travel style is decidedly more spontaneous than ours and whether they have better luck than we do or their intel is just 40 years old, I can’t decide, but after calling vineyard after vineyard, seeing if anyone has any availability for a tasting on a Saturday afternoon, the decision is made to just head to Verona and see what happens. This makes me a little nervous, but we set a good intention and head to the winery my dad picked.
It’s more of a parking lot across the street from a McDonald’s than a vineyard, unfortunately. Topher, Hazelnut and I have a 20 minute lead, so we start heading deeper into the hills. Topher follows signs for random vineyards, scaring rabbits hiding in the shade on this 100° day, while I furiously click around on Google Maps. There’s a gorgeous wine estate just down the road that makes Amarone, I find, and with little hope I pop inside. The woman behind the counter speaks perfect English, has room on a tour starting in 15 minutes and Hazelnut is welcome. I’m shocked. We high five back at the car and wait for my folks.
The cellar is deliciously cool and we walk past giant aging barrels, Hazelnut stoked that she’s being included. I’ve found one of the oldest producers in the region, dating back to the 1500s. We taste Valpolicella, Merlot, a local white called Soave and, of course, Amarone, made from perfect grapes dried to concentrate their flavors. I’m not a red drinker, but I’ve come to love learning about different wines and it’s fascinating. We spend the rest of the afternoon wandering around the town of Soave down the road, a castle and walls standing guard above the little village. We kill just enough time that it’s conceivably dinner and duck into a tiny restaurant that must have 300 different pasta dishes on the menu.
There’s a little coffee shop in the village near us where we get latte macchiatos and cornettos injected with our choice of creamy fillings in the mornings. I order pistachio and a teeny tiny ham sandwich in bad Italian and we sit in the square watching the town go by. Hazelnut is obsessed that her grandparents are here and pops into their room to say hi and wrestle at every opportunity. It’s adorable.
I may have framed a stay at Rifugio Pomedes as a birthday/retirement gift, but the truth is I’ve been dying to stay here since I first started Googling the Dolomites back in Colorado. Perched at the top of Cortina d’Ampezzo’s Tofana lift, the large sun deck gives 360° views from what feels like the top of the world. My dad, Sally and I opt for the chairlift while Topher and Hazelnut hike up the mountain. I peer over the edge, beer in hand, wondering if the route might have been a bit steeper than I’d anticipated as a mountain biker flies down it (spoiler: it was).
We spend the afternoon watching the light change on the peaks, the temperature swiftly dropping to a wonderful point that’s downright chilly. Our host’s grandfather built the rifugio and she shows us to our rooms upstairs, a balcony opening out to the same views as the deck. At dinner we eat gnocchi and knödel and tiramisu and it’s one of the best meals we’ve had in a long time. Everyone else tucks in, but Hazelnut and I sit out on the balcony with a blanket, watching the mountains turn bright pink and the clouds hug the peaks. Finally, I drag Sally out of bed to come see the show.
Our mountain guide, Paolo, asks carefully how we chose this via ferrata. We shrug as he downs an espresso. To be honest, I sorted the routes by location and let my dad pick, opting not to re-read the description in case I chickened out. Paolo assures us the route is his favorite, but leaves out the part about it being one of the most challenging in Italy. We don harnesses and helmets, Sally and Hazelnut turning small as we begin to climb up the slope. Paolo shows Topher, my dad and I how to clip into the cables bolted on the rock, always keeping one hand on their reassuring sturdiness to prevent our tethers from slipping. Every 10 feet or so we have to move the tethers past another bolt, one at a time so we always remain clipped in.
The route immeadiately goes vertical. We’d all been imagining horizontally traversing a cliff face, standing on metal pegs and ladders, but we’re solidly rock climbing. I quickly regret wearing my trail runners and try not to slip and slide on the rock too badly. We’re passed by several groups who obviously know what they’re doing, but we appear to be the only guided party on Punto Anna. There were several reasons I pretty much stopped rock climbing 7 years ago, but my inherent fear of heights was definitely one of them. As the exposure increases—a dizzying 1,200 feet at points—I remind myself to breathe. Paolo puts me on belay as my traitorous shoes slip on the rock and, per usual, I have to get creative to make many of the moves that I’m too short for, but we make it up section and after section and I’m proud of myself for not freaking out and crying (definitely my MO on big climbs). The views are magnificent. We’re climbing a peak by via ferrata that would never have been accessible to us with our skills as rock climbers. It’s exhilarating. We finally make it to the summit, a crow landing next to us, and Paolo suggests we skip the higher route as we’re moving a bit slow. I ask how the descent works and he tells me to focus on one problem at a time as we clip back in and start traversing the cliffs ahead of us, this time horizontally. When the cables end, we’re at the top of a long slope covered in fine scree.
I think Paolo’s joking when he tells us to run, but then he takes off down the slope, each step sliding several feet, sending cascades of sharp rocks flowing down the ravine. Topher gets the hang of it pretty quickly, giggling as he jogs down the slope, but I am non plussed. I would have rather kept climbing, I muse as I keep a razor thin grip on remaining vertical. When we finally get to the trail at the bottom, having somehow managed to fall only twice, we empty out our shoes. My dad has a comical amount of gravel in his, the pour taking a solid two seconds. By the time we make it back to the rifugio we are dirty, sore, sunburnt and exhausted but it’s wild to look up and see where we just came from. Paolo joins us for beers and the best candereli (beet filled pasta) I’ve ever had. We learn that not only did our host’s grandfather build the rifugio, but her father built the via ferrata we just ascended.
Sally has never met a goat cheese she doesn’t like and by our last day in Italy she’s amassed a huge collection. There’s brie and blue and machego, one aged in hay, one covered in poppy seeds and a soft, mozzarella-like one we layer between tomatoes and cover with basil and olive oil. The afternoon is slow and two bottles of wine disappear as we eat cheese in the shade of the patio. One air conditioning unit struggles to cool the Airbnb and Hazelnut switches between giving puppy dog eyes to my dad that result in bites of cheese, and laying on the stairs inside in prime position to soak up the cold breeze.
The region we’re staying in is small and in the countryside, but it’s surprisingly hip. We find ourselves on the patio of a distillery/mixology spot, sitting on the steps as the river runs under our feet. The cocktails are bright purple and ruby red and we order foccacia alongside, mist forming on the water as the temperature drops.
There’s three hours between the Italian countryside and our piece of Croatian coastline and we all marvel how two days earlier we were summiting one of the Dolomites as we transition from oysters slurped straight from the sea to calamari and grilled fish down the street.
The sunset casts orange light through the olive groves, highlighting the burls and ripening fruit. A long table is set with flickering candles and bottles upon bottles of olive oil and we’re led through a tasting by a professional sommelier. I think this may be Topher’s calling as he correctly identifies each flavor note. By the time we dig into the picnic boxes they've prepared for us, the light is nearly gone and we can’t tell if we’re eating zucchini or cucumber, but it’s wonderful. My dad accidentally pours olive oil into his wine glass in the dark and we can’t stop laughing. The stars come out one by one.
I have always been terrible at paddling. Sally maintains it’s just a story I’m telling myself, but as Topher and I bicker about why we’re falling further and further behind our sea kayak tour, I flash to the moment that I beeched our raft on the only possible obstacle in the middle of the Green River at 15 when handed the oars, Gianna and I stranded as everyone else in our group floated down river. It’s extra embarrassing because we’ve done this before and our guides know it. The coast is packed, even at 9am. August has well and truly arrived and by the time we get to the Blue Cave, we’re dodging dozens of kayaks, German cliff jumping bros who don’t check their landing and boats of all sizes. I managed to get through the entire via ferrata without crying, but I have tears running down my face as we reach our break spot. We switch kayaks and Sally takes me out around the bay as everyone else snorkels. She’s been paddling for years, having lived on Camano Island in a past life, and her steady instruction has me at least paddling slightly more straight. We rejoin the group and watch as my dad attempts a backflip off the cliff jump, goaded on by a group of little boys. We all swim in the warm water—its nearly 80° now—the waves pushing us around.
There’s dolphins at our favorite coffee spot where we have lunch and my dad and I walk through the oppressive heat to the arena, me pointing out every arch and terranino spot along the way. We stop for granitas and peer through the fence into the depths of the arena, marveling at the architecture. I convince him to try his first Aperol Spritz and it feels too soon to say goodbye, but then we’re crying in their hotel room and I’m promising we’ll be home soon.
I’m so grateful that so many of you have spent your money, time and effort to come visit us halfway across the world. It’s not something we expected would happen when we chose a random country to move to, but we feel so loved and each visit only cements that home is where your heart is, and as much as we love being over here, our heart is our people. I’m still not sure what’s next, but I do hope it involves hugging alot of you soon!
-Mikaela