Leaving Lake Bled we headed west avoiding the motorways. I'm very glad we did as they seemed to dive into tunnels at all the most interesting places. The drive across the top of Slovenia and the north east corner of Italy was stunning with high mountains towering over the lower wooded slopes. The river we followed for the first 40 km was a brilliant cobalt blue. Annoyingly the roads do not offer pull off points at the places where good photos can be taken, so we have to rely on our memories for the scenes.
Once we were in Italy we left the main route and headed for a couple of roads our map marked as "scenic". In fact all areas in the Dolomites are scenic! We climbed up the side of one valley through woodland that was being felled, but not clear felled as in NZ. The selected trees are cut, stripped and dragged to the side of the road where they are collected at a later date. This left the bulk of the forest still standing which was beautiful, but frustrating as you could only catch glimpses of the mountains and streams through the trees. At one point the solid yellow road on the map turned into an unsealed logging road, so we back tracked to a different route which lead up through a skifield and high alpine meadows with large patches of snow beside the road to a pass at 1800m altitude. We then dropped 1000m on a series of hairpin bends down an almost vertical descent. Again magical views, but nowhere to stop and enjoy them. Of course the road quality deteriorated once we were in Italy, but the countryside and the road verges are much tidier and cleaner than we saw in southern Italy.In the process of the drive we were north of the area where my father was transferred to as a POW from Campo 67 - Gravina. This was Campo 57 in Grupignano . It is a little north of Udine. The road we would have needed to take was south of where we were and it would have skirted the national Park and was long and torturous route - however it was within Northern Italy and I knew my father would have seen a similar landscape as we did. The camp sat on flat ground of a river plain surrounded in the distance by the Dolomites. These Dolomites are truly breath taking viewed thorough our eyes, safely tucked up in our brand new air conditioned car. I do wonder how he would have viewed them, in a POW compound surrounded by barbed wire. I read the account of this camp. It was run by an Italian Colonel of the Italian cabarabinieri who was a stern disciplinarian , had dictatorial methods and carried out some brutal punishments. Despite being a better run camp than many other Italian camps it is clear there were no comforts. It is very high and cold - especially in winter with considerable snow fall.
We climbed again over another pass at 1800m, but much less steep, and descended into Cortina d'Ampezzo to find our accommodation at an elevation of 1200m and a cool (for us) 19C and a light drizzle..Dinner that night was at the hotel - an amazing venue - very chintzy with dressed chairs in white and large bows on the back of the seats Around what used to called the picture rail around the entire room were plates, evidently potted and painted by the same artist - depicting an almost caricature of various restaurants in Italy and surrounding countries - depicting some aspect of the restaurant or local area. Very clever. Throughout the entire hotel are local antique artifacts - household goods mainly - electrolux etc including a set of very old and beautifully preserved skis that would be just right for Lucas!
We had breakfast there also - everything very sweet. I took and egg, thinking it had obviously been cooked some time ago as it felt cool to the touch .Just as I was about to crack it open a heavily accented male voice said 'It's raw' so I hastily returned said egg to where I found it - lying in a dish with several oval molded depressions to take an egg each. There beside the dish sat the egg cooker! I gave a hoot of laughter and returned egg to its plate!
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