Snow, food, wine, Italy

We absolutely love living in Edinburgh, but this city seems to have two major flaws: 1) it doesn’t get enough snow and 2) Italy is no longer within a reasonable driving distance. We were starting to feel it was time to address the deficits of snow and Italy in our lives.

An invitation to some friends’ cabin in the Dolomites had us booking flights without delay. We envisioned a relaxing time eating, drinking, talking, wandering through the snow, and admiring the views. We were not disappointed.

For the first few days we mostly ate at the cabin, gorging ourselves on cheeses, pasta, vegetables, and blood oranges (even in the middle of winter in a small town in the mountains, Italian produce is amazing). All this was topped off, naturally, with local wine and grappa. Many price comparisons were tossed out, things along the lines of ‘this 3-liter container of wine cost the same as one glass in a pub in Edinburgh.’

We did go out for one meal, at our friends’ local favorite Agritur Maso Santa Romina.

We intended to spend a week in Italy, half in the mountains and half visiting a few cities. But then we saw there was a big snowfall scheduled for Thursday, and we couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the cabin before it.

So we stayed, and were treated to two days of almost non-stop snow. Around 60 cm (2 feet), I think, but we weren’t very accurate in our measurements. We were too busy playing in it.

Then we realized that we might be getting so much snow that we’d have trouble making it off the mountain for our flight home, much less in time to see some of the cities we had hoped to visit.

After a brief panic, we researched flight change costs and other relevant details, and talked ourself into a second week in Italy. We celebrated this decision with more wine. (Luckily we were well-stocked on both food and beverage, having run amok in an Italian supermarket a few days before the storm.)

There’s nothing like topping off a week in Italy with a second week in Italy.

Decision to stay made, we relaxed again and enjoyed a few more days in the snowy embrace of the Dolomites.

When it was finally time to leave, we dug out the car and sledded our luggage down to it (the long, steep driveway proving most undrivable). After a short distance we were able to take the chains off the tires, and we were on our way back to civilization. Next stop, Padova.