Mobile Blog - Day 3 - Monte Baldo

The joy of this apartment is that we need to walk (10-20 minutes depending on with whom you are walking) into town. There are only two routes. The primary route is relatively flat, but the secondary route, via Fornaci, has a steep decline. This is okay to go down for Peter, but only I could take the road up and that winded me.

The reason I tell you this is the day that I first walked via Fornaci, when I reached the top of the street, I saw an amazing flower, with apricot colored fruit. I didn't have my camera, so today on our excursion to Monte Baldo, I captured the following shot.

The fruit (in the upper left corner of the photo) looks similar to a fruit I have only had in Salerno, Italy. That fruit is called neppole or nebbole. Is this the same? If anyone knows, I sure would like to know.

But I digress. The primary route we take to town goes right past the Funivia (Panoramic Cablecar) that we took to the top of Monte Baldo.

We started our excursion at 10:30. The trip to the summit supposedly only takes 10 minutes but with the queuing in lines, the trip took almost an hour. I can't imagine the wait during peak season.

Monte Baldo, elevation 2,218 m (7,277 ft)
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Monte Baldo is a mountain in the Italian Alps, located in the provinces of Trentino and Verona. Its ridge spans mainly northeast-southwest, and is bounded from south by the highland ending at Caprino Veronese, from west by Lake Garda, from north by the valley joining Rovereto to Nago-Torbole and, from east, the Val d'Adige.

The name derives from the German Wald ("forest"); it appears for the first time in a German map in 1163.

The summit is reachable through a cable car from the nearby town of Malcesine, lying on the Lake Garda.

Mount Baldo is characterized by a geographical identity, a ridge parallel to Lake Garda, which stretches for 40 km, between the lake to the west and Val d'Adige to the east, and on the south it is bounded by plain Caprino and North Valley Loppio.

It was a glorious day, but even with the brilliant sun, there was still a lot of haze. So forgive my pictures if the distant Alps aren't more clearly defined. Remember, this blog is "My views untouched". I don't use filters, cropping or any other photographic tricks. You see what I see. With that, here is what I saw today.

Of course we had lunch on the mountain. We were, as usual, mistaken for German by our waitress, but she quickly understood English when it came time to pay our check. As you can see, I had my Aperol Spritz (actually 2) so when I handed Peter a 50€ bill for our 47.50€ lunch (tax and service included), I said... "You may keep the change, Peter" and our waitress said "Thank you so much!"

Who knew her name was Peter?

Peter wanted me to photograph these flowers. They were truly beautiful...but the color sort of "burns my eye". What do you think?

Okay, almost time for dinner. Ciao!