Doing some hiking from Italy to Switzerland, harvesting grapes... the normal things. :)

listening to some jazz on the piazza in Perledo, a top cultural experience

Ciao tutti!!!  I hope you are all well!  My thoughts & prayers are going out to everyone in the south dealing with Isaac, hoping for the best!

I am dealing with far less crucial matters over here, just a heat wave, some itchy insect bites & having little time to update the blog!  So, I have loaded a load of pics on here for you today.  Possibly an overload.

So, since I have last written I finished up my farming on Lake Como, what a gorgeous place!!!  I was so happy to have spent so much time there, I am lucky!  Then I took a 3 day solo hike excursion staying at a couple of rifugios on the way, totaling 55 km!  Maybe about 30 miles, it was a lot of ups & downs in the HOT sun.  And, I managed to hike into Switzerland, which I thought was pretty cool!  It seemed... a lot like Italy but was twice as expensive!  Seems like Switzerland is not for the budget traveler but, was nice.

Then I traveled back down south to where I find myself now, in Le Marche near the small towns of Monte Roberto & Cupramontana.  Really out in the countryside.  Here I am staying in a super old farmhouse & harvesting grapes to make a spumante!  It is like a dream.  The only thing that could make it better would be if the foot stomping method of crushing grapes was still used.  Haven't you always wanted to do that?  Here we pop all the grapes into a big metal press.  We are harvesting primarily Verdicchio grapes, which are famous in this region as well as some Trebbiano, Malvasia, Moscato, Sangiovese & Montepulciano.  Yum!  I enjoy eating the grapes throughout the day, especially the Moscato.

There were two fun gals from New York volunteering here with me for a bit, it was awesome to hang out with some cool American ladies.  Coming soon are two Polish ladies & a South African dude, should be a multicultural bonanza!  There is a sweet nonna here who makes lunch for us everyday & I am speaking Italian about 100% of the time.  I have been pleased with my new ability to understand the news on tv as well as jokes & sarcasm, sometimes I am even able to come back with a clever & possibly sarcastic reply!  Wow.  There had been a serious heat wave which made everything seem like the inside of an oven but, luckily it has cooled off considerably.

Here are some photos, enjoy!

setting out to hike the Sentiero del Viandante along Lake Como

trail is well marked with cute little signs about half the time, the other half you must use intuition

nice view of Bellano & Dervio, my destination

scenic sections

tiny churches along the way

met these two jackasses...  oh, ha ha.

what an artful array of clothespins

here's the zone I went bouldering that one time, sooooo awesome

more cute scooters

in Menaggio

successful broken toe treatment

still looking for the guy with the boat...

the most amazing fig harvest ever!!  !!! !!  I ate about 50.

harvesting my favorite plums

fiumelatte, milk river, the shortest in Italy & so steep that it is always looking like milk!

whoa, look at that... milk!  it may look like a raging river but, it was tiny.

I would like to live here.  could it be too cute?

there was this awesome secret garden that i ducked into to take some photos

the owner showed up & caught me taking photos , we had a nice talk about tomatoes

black & white, a good concealer

And then...  I set out on this big hike, the Sentiero delle 4 valli!  I was prepared with a map, a printed write up & some snacks.  I had found out about this trail online & asked about it at the local tourist office, they seemed to know about it so I decided, why not?

it was raining lightly when I began

here was the trailmarker sign i was always scanning  for, the one with the red slash

my trail description, all the hiking times were definitely underestimated.  also, the yummy pizza flavored taralli, some tasty but dry snacks.  

a lovely meadow

many views like this, here was a dairy where i commented on the nice cows & was invited in to try some soft, alpine cheeses

this candy bar used to be my FAV O RITE, I was excited to eat it because i hadn't had it during my 8 years of vegan.  it turns out that i don't even like milk chocolate anymore, just tastes like sugar.  (not like i hated it though, was good!!!) 

tiny towns clinging to the hills

took a nap under this tree for about an hour, got infested by chiggers.  OMG, chiggers are heinous.  what a bunch of hellish itching...

saw a lot of really pretty cows, they spend their summers up in the mountains!  as you walk along you hear their bells ringing, it is a bit magical.

and here I have made it to Switzerland!  It was a fantastic moment!

having a swiss moment

spotting out my trail markers

What you are not seeing is how hellish this trail could be.  I didn't see any other hikers & got lost many times.  Fortunately there were many small towns & I would always be asking people the way.  They would either say oh, everybody gets lost here, or else oh, no one really hikes that trail...  either way, it was an adventure & took a lot longer than I thought.  And did I mention, IT WAS HOT!  hella hot.  To be honest with you, doing a multi day hike by myself was boring for me.  When I was getting tired, at the point I would be used to telling jokes or being silly with my friends, I was left with my Ipod for comfort (or talking to myself in Italian like a crazy person).  Thankfully I had some good podcasts, Madonna & the Pixies to listen to.  So, on the last day I really didn't take many photos, just had a death march down the mountain & jumped directly into some river to lower the core temp.  Somehow, I managed to make my way to Lugano Switzerland looking like some vagabond.  Lugano was nice, as mentioned, very expensive & really during my stay there I was obsessing about those damn chigger bites, generally going crazy with itchiness.  Cute town though.

some Swiss banks!

swiss fountains

cute swiss pedalos

there was a real pretty swiss park here on the shore of Lake Lugano

And then, here I am back in Italy.  Where I am enjoying hanging out with the nearly 20 cats & having some nice white wine.  We went to the beach today, it's still the Adriatic here but absolutely nothing like the sweet, amazing, turqouise waters I enjoyed on the other side in Monte.  Still, nice & rinfrescante.

dense Verdicchio grapes

picking in the vineyard

the scene in Le Marche

vinyard at 6:30 am

this was crazy.  one of the vineyards here is a big mess of mixed grapes.  here is a "map" to  find  the correct grapes.  it was un bel casino, you really had to develop a search image for the proper grape.  like a treasure hunt!

so pretty!

so translucent like little lanterns

a nice bucket of moscato grapes, the tastiest

a bunch of bins ready to pop in the press

all the grapes are picked in the morning while still cool & then pressed ASAP that same day.  

the red grapes were also tres delish.  did you know that there are some red grapes in white wines?  just not the skins.  this is one of the many things i have learned.

And, that's that.  I will be here through about the 10th & then will return to Roma for about a week.  I am really looking forward to seeing my pal Kim who will come to visit in mid-September.  Yay!!!  We have some fun travels planned to places like the Dolomites & Cinque Terre.

Wishing you all a wonderful evening, love & miss you!!
xoxo