Smug bastards on tour

This post is going to be about 90% photos and bragging, so if you don't like either of those things, you had probably better skip this one.

On Thursday, we got up bright and early to take a cable car from Malcesine to the top of Monte Baldo, almost 1800 metres up. We were already equipped with tickets purchased the previous day and armed with the fruits of my internet research that was full of disgruntled people complaining about waiting in queues for hours to get up and down the mountain.

No such trouble for us (here is part one of the bragging) - we arrived fifteen minutes before the first departure, were about third in line, and had plenty of prime window space on both of the cars. The first one up the mountain is fixed in position, so you need to get a good spot, but the second revolves around, so everyone can get a good view, but you inevitably end up staring at the mountain side for half the trip.

It was a glorious sunny day and the views over the lakes and mountains are just stunning. Luckily enough, the sun in the morning is on the perfect side to shine down on to the lake and since we were on the first car, it was nice and peaceful up there as we strolled along the flat ridge line enjoying our surroundings.

Looking towards the south

I need my dad's bird identification skills here

Channelling the Sound of Music on the mountain top

Cute alpaca friend

Looking at the north end of the lake

Fabulous, right? Here's the bragging part two, louder, braggier and uncut. By the time we were heading back down to the cable car, the trickle of people walking the other way had turned into a steady stream. The cars coming up the mountain were full, whereas we were the only two on both of our trips - which meant that we circumvented that staring at the mountain half the time thing.

View of Malcesine from the funicular. I made a cool timelapse of the trip down but I can't work out how to upload it here :(

When we arrived back at base, we found the fabled queues had indeed built up, going all the way along the corridor, down the stairs and into the lobby, with more people arriving all the time. Boy, was I smug! The best thing I've found about being married (so far) is the opportunity to say "aren't you glad you married such a smart wife?" I'm sure there are other good bits too, but thus far that and the ring are the only bits that have really changed. So if you're planning to visit Monte Baldo, #1 get a smart wife and #2 go first thing in the morning.

We were back down by 10:30 and after that, we stocked up on Italian bread, salami and cheese and spent the afternoon chilling out by the pool at our apartment. Just what the doctor ordered.

Gardians of the Galaxy

Honeymoon Day 4, Wednesday, was all about relaxing and taking it easy on the shores of Lake Garda. Our apartment, a rather bare but spacious and functional space, was located a couple of miles from the pretty town of Malcesine, on the eastern side of the lake. We headed into Malcesine first thing, primarily to wander around and take plenty of photos of the picturesque cobblestoned town and its gorgeous lakeside setting.

After our walk, it was time for lunch at Re Lear, in a cobbled square in the centre of Malcesine. It was quite an unusual place, since it had a quick menu with the likes of pasta carbonara or croque monsieurs alongside a gourmet tasting menu, focused on local "zero kilometre" food. I have some issues with food miles as a concept, as it fails to take into account other factors such as differences in heating or cooling or fertiliser use in different parts of the world, which can mean that your apples from New Zealand are not actually worse for the environment than those from France (yes, some bias for my heavily export-dependent home country as well), but as a tourist experience, I do like the idea of tasting fresh local products, which tend to be made with more care than somewhere that's just microwaving a frozen dinner for undiscerning tourists they know they'll never see again.

My favourite dish, an entrée of sea bass raviolo with rhubarb foam

After lunch, we headed south down the lake to Bardolino, an area reputed for its wine. There are lots of places you can taste wine in the region, but we opted, for convenience, to go to the Zeni wine "museum". It was evident going in that it would be a bit touristy and that the museum was basically just a bunch of old equipment in a room, but sometimes it's okay to do the touristy thing because it's easy and set up for people, as opposed to fetching up at some working vineyard where they're not really expecting tourists and maybe don't speak English. Plus, as it turned out, the staff was really nice and friendly, and it was overall a good experience.

We arrived just before they reopened after lunch, and there was already a large group - of Germans, I swear everybody here is German, we have been counting the non-German cars on the road - waiting outside, so instead of going into the museum, where they offer free wine tasting, we went around the corner to the cellar where you can pay a small fee to taste some of the more expensive wines.

Love among the barrels

We decided to do the "olfactory experience", which consisted of smelling mystery odours in a series of unmarked boxes and writing down our best guess as to what they might be. It was super hard! I knew already I'm not very good at identifying wine tastes and smells, but this confirmed it. Each of us only correctly identified three of the scents. Some I wasn't too far off (I reversed the leather and tobacco samples, for example), but my worst blunder was guessing "red fruits" for coffee! Ironically, I really hate the smell of coffee, so I would have thought I'd get that one for sure. After we were finished smelling, we tasted two glasses of wine and tried to match their profiles with some of the scents we had sniffed.

As our tranquil wine tasting was coming to an end, the big German group appeared downstairs so we absconded up on to the museum/shop level. Here, you got a free tasting glass and could dispense your own wine right from the bottle. Fun for the whole family!

I don't really know a lot about Italian wines, so it was fun to taste a couple (and I'm sure we'll have more opportunities to discover as we go!)