More than two dozen villages cling to the water's serpentine edge. Launches ferry passengers from here to there like city buses. We headed out on a slow steamer, or ordinario, and returned on the hydrofoil with a rooster's tail kicking up behind us. We hopped on and off at whim, visiting small towns with big personalities. Limone is noted for its lemon groves and its residents' long life expectancy. Windsurfers prefer Torbole. Torri del Benaco is a fishing haven. Gardone Riviera has a well-regarded botanical garden. Malcesine has a mountain; Bardolino, an olive oil museum.
A stop at Museo dell'Olio made me wish I could load the trunk with huge vessels of locally grown and pressed olive oil and head home as the locals were doing. It was torture to only taste from the sample bottles and not buy them all, so different and delicate were the flavors. The array of balsamic vinegars was impressive as well. Some were nearly black and thick as molasses -- suitable, we were told, as a topping for strawberries.
Lake Garda, Italy's largest lake, is dotted with more than two dozen villages, like the picturesque Malcesine.
() Johnathan Smith, Cordaiy Photo Library Ltd./corbis)
|
|
The museum has a collection of antique millstones, presses, curing vats and glassware decanters that have been used by the region's olive industry since the 1700s, as well as photographs outlining the cultivation of olives and production of oil.
The extravagance of wealth and eccentric taste fills the Vittoriale degli Italiani, near Gardone Riviera in Gardone di Sopra, home of poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, who died in 1938, and the only great house we visited. Art deco in design and wacko in furnishings, the villa includes a coffin-shape bed, a stuffed tortoise on the dining room table (it was found dead in the garden after eating too many tuberoses and preserved by D'Annunzio to thereafter remind guests of the dangers of gluttony), a bathroom with nearly 1,000 blue objects, a ship embedded in the garden, religious icons and a library with 33,000 books.
One of our best lunches of the trip was at the Bellavista Cafe across from the villa. Under the grape arbor, we ate bruschette tirol, bread spread with a piquant olive pâté, topped with a wedge of brie, fresh arugula and a sweet pickle.
We took the land route to Malcesine, a town at the northern end of the lake, sharing the road with dozens of Sunday motorcyclists who possibly thought they were competing in a cross-country race. The drive was an exercise in breathing: I would gasp at the vistas, then hold my breath when a cyclist passed on a curve. It took us nearly 1 1/2 hours to drive the mountainous 40 miles around the lake. Malcesine has a bohemian flair and, being near the border, lots of German tourists. Its narrow streets march up from the water to the castle past artists' studios and an unusual number of leather goods stores, which were packed with shoppers. We took the 15-minute cable car ride to the top of Mount Baldo, having no clue that there was an afternoon jazz concert tribute to the big-band songs of Frank Sinatra.
At 7,000 feet, it was windy and brisk, but the music was hot. We tapped our feet to familiar tunes -- and to keep warm -- while looking at the diamond-studded lake below and the snow-dusted mountains in the distance. We walked down from the midpoint relay station. It took us 90 minutes. The path was one long, steep S-curve past terraced fruit orchards and simple farmhouses. Cabbage, arugula and Swiss chard grew in tidy fall gardens. Wood was stacked for winter. Grapes vines supported patio arbors and vice versa. An old woman with a brown face wrapped in a black kerchief sat in the sun against an apricot house at a blue table peeling red apples, watched by a tabby cat. A fig tree hugged a wall for warmth.
Our favorite "still life" was a backyard garden decorated with broken bicycle parts -- handlebars, wheels, fenders, pedals. Some parts hung like Calder mobiles in the fruit and olive trees; others bordered small cultivated beds like Warhol pop art fences.
Lake Maggiore
For the second leg of our trip, we drove past Lake Como to Maggiore, passing near Bergamo and Milan before heading north. We were almost at the Swiss border when we stopped at Cannobio, the last Italian town on the Piedmont side of Lake Maggiore, the country's second-largest lake. Stresa is the lake's most popular spot, but after lively Sirmione, we sought quiet. This medieval village had clearly escaped commercial development.
We also were at the beginning of a three-day rain that dashed our plans to hike to some of the numerous villages throughout the mountainous hinterland, many accessible only by funicular or foot. We gazed longingly at the map highlighting various mule paths, fruitlessly watched gray skies for a sighting of blue and resigned ourselves to another game of Scrabble in the hotel's intimate library, with its fireplace and collection of Italian art books. There are worse places to be caught in the rain.
