Monte Rosso Hike

We’ve been doing a lot of map-gazing; cartography is a universal language. Green square: playground potential! Yellow road: highway to be avoided. Lots of crossed and crowded skinny roads: pedestrian heaven with interesting architecture. So we decided to just follow these zigzags and hope they led us somewhere interesting.

What we found was initially a vertical neighborhood, where your garage is a couple flights of stairs below your house and you toot your car horn before every hairpin.

It turned into Monte Rosso, a protected park with trees and trees and trees and ferns and grasses and moss and old stone walls and trees and bushes and everything evocative of fairie peoples and magic.

And then the trail burst into a village of stone and secrets and streets so narrow even the scooters had to park in the town parking lot.

Every building in Cavandone is constructed of the same stone. Every alley you turn down is completely the same and completely different than the one you were just in. It felt like we stepped right into David Macaulay’s PBS movie Castle (remember that one, and Cathedral, Annalise?).

But wait; there’s more! The trail kept going! Through orchards with more beehives than we have fingers and toes. Through hedged tunnels that were dark and cool. Through walled passes with gates and arches. Past sweeping properties looming over the lake.

Until we finally found our way back to our favorite gelateria and home. I’d say this was a hike unlike anything we’ve done in the US. Yay for map-gazing!