the plankman’s blog

The day: Sunday 20 March 2005
The intention? Visit the mighty Dolomites.
Degree of Success for initial task: Failure
Degree of Enjoyment: High
Result: Worthy of visiting again – preferrably with LESS mist :-) But fantastic to see architecture, bizarre family oriented happenings in the general square, and 16th Century fresco’s … in the middle of nowhere… incredible!

A brief tale: Sunday arrives, and I awaken with the express intention of running off to the Dolomites with Marky. We hit the train station and order two tix for our trip. It was absolutely gorgeous. It took about 45 minutes before we started approaching the mountains – and then another half hour winding our way along little towns between massive rock walls. It was interesting to note the shift in architecture to a more Austrian/Swiss feel. Eventually we get to Belluno. (But no Dolomites… not even a large hill to be seen. So sad. Stoopid stoopid mist! %@#$)
The town was ghostly. Noone in the streets. After walking around for a while we found the main square. There was a table with three blocks of what we thought was wood. With a very strange grain! (Please imagine a dramatic darkening of the sky as you read this last sentence.)

Anyway – we ate lunch at a pizza house. We ordered a pizza with Horse meat on it. Yes. Thats right. Horsey meat. Tasted ok. A bit… well I guess thinking about the fact that it used to be a little horsey (like Black beauty – sniff sniff) made it taste a little different perhaps. Anyway, we were kicked out of the restaurant at around 3pm. (They turned off the lights and gave us tiny coffees) And as we hit the streets we immediately noticed that there were PEOPLE! Real living walking people. From ghost town to bustling city (with children and old people and the whole shebang). The most notable thing was the weird blocks of eerie grained wood were being carved by three scultpors! They were in fact MASSIVE blocks of chocolate. And they were handing out the chips of choc as freebies to all the sugar deprived masses (of primarily children and Mark and Daniel). Suffice it to say we managed to chomp down on some free (and uber tasty) choccy. Then we enjoyed the madness of sugar enhanced kid energy zooming past around us – with parental figures in tow. It was a good day.

The Dolomites! (From the train)

A view from one of the chapels

A view from one of the chapels redux

Ridiculous… A fresco… just THERE

The choccy arteeests

The choccy arteeests – collecting chips for the sugar deprived

Mark: One of the sugar deprived (and soon after, I followed in his footsteps)

The character of the chocolate as revealed by the masterful carver

Learning italian while waiting for the train…(oi)