It was a toss up over what to write about this month and then I got to thinking that a change in venue might be refreshing. So this month, I move my pen to the North to the Lombardy and Veneto regions to tell a story from an earlier visit.
That was the time I actually arrived at Milan’s Malpensa Airport on crutches - no lie - from a back injury suffered just days before. By all rights I should have stayed home in bed, recuperating, but how can anyone pass up a planned trip to ‘Bella Italia’? It was really touch and go there for a while. In fact, on the morning of our scheduled departure I wasn’t able to get myself out of bed, though believe me I tried. Maria Elena, on seeing my plight and realizing I wasn’t going to be able to right myself, suggested calling to cancel the reservations we had waiting but before that, I made one last attempt. This time, with the accumulated help, by now, of many ibuprofen tablets and a handy set of aluminum crutches, I was able to stand upright. Long story short, we went anyway and so there we were being led through the access tunnel from the aircraft, Maria Elena walking beside me, as an attendant rolled me the last few yards into Italy in a wheelchair!
That didn’t last long, however, because by the time we got to our rental, the wheelchair was history. I had straightened out after eight hours of sitting and the crutches I’d brought along were tossed in the back seat never to be used again the entire trip. I’d put my faith in and entrusted our vacation to modern medicine, self administered every two hours, along with a tight, Velcro back support waistband! People stared.
We were headed east, by way of the A4 Autostrada, to the town of Montichiari (‘Monty-key-ah-ree’), located not far from picturesque Lake Garda. Montichiari, which dates from the middle ages, is a lovely town of 20,000 people situated in the Lombardy province of Brescia. Among its jewels is the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta (where in 1947 the Virgin Mary allegedly appeared), along with Bonoris Castle, a recreated medieval style fortress built over the ruins of the ancient Rocca.
We were on our way to Villa San Pietro, a 17th century villa painstakingly restored to retain its original character by its owners, Anna Maria and Jacques. If you should ever find yourself there, as guests of this French-Italian couple, as we did, you’ll enjoy a relaxing atmosphere beneath lofty ceiling beams and intricate frescoes estimated to date as far back as 1500 A.D. Ancient brick floors and well appointed rooms with shuttered windows opening to grandstand views over terracotta roofs, each decorated with beautiful antique furnishings, make this an especially peaceful location only a few streets and turns from the center of Montichiari. Sitting there in its secluded courtyard in the shade of a marble-columned loggia, the vestal voices of nuns from an adjacent convent evoked an enchanting heavenly mood and made the quiet even more profound when it returned. There is fact and there is opinion but I feel confident when I say that a stay there will not only bring you back to health but can rejuvenate your soul.
We rested a while hoping to flush our jetlag and then checked with our hostess for a recommendation on where best to eat that evening wherein Anna-Maria made a phone call for a reservation at ‘Trattoria La Capretta’. We followed her directions to this local family-run establishment without any problem. They appeared to be waiting for us. For dinner, we had in mind a shared antipasto with additional side salads. We related this to our waiter and surprisingly, to help decide on what we might like in our antipasto, he led us into the kitchen. The kitchen was dominated by a large marble faced fireplace, the kind you could walk into. It began on the floor and soaring past a broad mantlepiece concluded its assent at the ceiling. They were roasting chicken at the time on a grate over shimmering coals. I recall the heat. This wood fired hearth made the room stiflingly hot and somewhat smoky. In fact, you could detect a faint odor of smoke as far away as the dining room. The younger of the two kitchen attendants, wearing a white, lab-coat type smock, led us to a refrigerator. With gestures, she encouraged us to choose what we wanted in our antipasto. We selected an assortment of meats, cheeses and vegetables. I also spied a glass-doored cooler containing handmade pasta and ravioli. Unable to resist, we also asked for orders of the tempting ravioli. So much with watching our carbs and this was only our first day!
The ravioli came in a butter sauce. Maria Elena sampled it and instantly loved the flavor. She guessed that it contained cinnamon. We never got it straight that night but later found that the special ingredient was pumpkin (‘zucca’). We learned this was a regional specialty and we wouldn’t find it anywhere else in Italy. They were right because since then we haven’t. We should have had more! The staff, everyone, was extremely friendly. In way of testimony in fact, one patron sitting nearby, who was in the cheese business, went to his car and returned with samples for us.
Out and about days later, I noticed a sign above a Montichiari storefront which read “Carna Equina”. I thought I knew what that meant but one additional clue, the chess-piece symbol of a knight, confirmed that my suspicion was correct – horse meat! With an entire store dedicated to horsemeat, they must like it there. No glue factory for these nags! On a return visit to our friendly trattoria days later, you guessed it, I asked if they served ‘carna equina’. Not surprisingly, they did. Maria Elena enjoyed the pumpkin ravioli one last time while I ventured into a new culinary genre. Though I’d eaten rattlesnake and it did taste like chicken, this didn’t! It looked like a slab of bone-in ham, though much redder and very lean. There is something to the adage “People like sausage; they just don’t want to see how it is made!” In this case, once you got past the psychological stigma of its origin, it tasted wonderful.
After our dinner, we moved to a table of locals who waved for us to join them. We had seen some of them on our earlier visit and again around the town. The dozen or so of them were apparently regulars and seemingly, over the visits we made, never with wives. We sang songs, mostly Pavarotti ballads, lead by the headman, the owner’s nephew, Angelo. The owner herself was a no-nonsense woman, cloaked in politeness, who sat in a strategic position facing the door smoking most of the time and not missing a thing. She too wore a white smock like the others, akin to what a doctor would wear. We enjoyed sorbet with the group, which was made right there of lemon, ice cream, champagne and vodka. As the night went on, the songs came easier and the foreign syllables in our foreign mouths became effortless to mimic with each additional sorbet and aperitivo!
At some point, Maria Elena had to use the restroom and excused herself. She headed to where they told her she’d find it, but once there, she was embarrassed to think she’d arrived in the men’s room. She proceeded to the kitchen to ask the female cooks where it was located but they only brought her back to the same place! What had her convinced it was the men’s room was the total lack of a toilet and/or bidet. There was no commode in there at all, just a white porcelain fixture flush (no pun intended) with the floor - Eastern European style through and through! This was it then, she’d have to make do. Nature’s call was complicated further because she was wearing pantyhose. Decisions, decisions - which way to face, what to hold onto, would she ever be able to rise from the deep knee-squat predicament she’d find herself in? Well, always game and a good egg, she did what any self respecting ‘Montichiarian’ would have done in that situation and later, back again among our crooning troop of diners, flashed me a glimpse of her pantyhose, now rolled up in her blazer pocket, with a whispered promise, “I’ll tell you later”!
The rest of our time in this area was spent visiting places like Verona, Lake Garda, beautiful lakeside Salo and Sirmone with its jewel of medieval architecture, Scaligeri Castle, complete with drawbridge. One special highlight was a short roundtrip train ride to Venice for the day.
One particularly special place, not in any tour operator’s crosshairs and lying just south of Lake Garda, is the small “borghetto” town of Valeggio sul Mincio in the Veneto region. It had a quiet charm about it that day but, historically speaking, this is a relatively newly acquired attribute. For in the 13th and 14th centuries this was contentious terrain; a continuous battleground held sway to the strategic ambitions of the city states of Milan, Bologna and Florence. This picturesque village, steeped in an air of lost distinction, is known for its Ponte Visconte (Visconti Bridge), really a fortified dam built in 1393 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan, whose ambition was to unite northern Italy. This bridge, which you can traipse across on foot or by car, is 650 meters long and 25 meters wide. It was once connected to the nearby 13th centruy Scaliger Castle by two, parallel battlements and in this way was integrated into the fortified complex known as the Serraglio defensive line. It’s hard to believe but this ancient ‘Maginot Line’ of its day remarkibly extended for 16 km! The blood which undoubtedly flowed in the Mincio river beneath this bridge is now long gone as is any evidence of the tall stone ramparts where vigilent men passed their lives in fealty to long forgotten causes. Yet it is the souls of these rugged men and their struggles, sacrifices and accomplishments which is our Italy today, the Italy we yearn to return to and explore.
Our trip, well, it ended all too soon. My back eventually healed some but to this day I still experience a twinge now and then, sometimes a total relapse reminiscent of the five days I spent in bed before venturing off to Italy and its Montichiari, castles, tenors and battlements. I am weakened for it but am all the stronger for the experiences and memories gained, which remain more evocative than scenes of the storied, "must see" places we have all been to.
Divertiti,
Paolo
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