If you don't want to eat off them, you should at least see them, experience them. Aurelio was quickly at the steering wheel. Having gotten clay out of the way, she was in the mood for mountains. And just up the road, all right, about 300 miles into the northeast zone of Italy, they began to peek at us above the Adige Valley. This territory, known as the Alto Adige or the South Tyrol, depending on your bloodlines, was amputated from Austria as a World War I prize for Italy, a victor in that one.
Road signs appear in German and Italian.
That's as easy as passing off grape juice as merlot. He runs, of all things, a no-name ice cream parlor on Piazza Walther, where we luckily, accidentally bump into him and his charming daughter, Katja. Once the Boston connection is established, Grai is courtly, helpful. A man of wide international experience, well and conservatively dressed, obviously shrewd, he sends us into the mountains with recommendations. Those include a small, splendid inn, the Parc Hotel Miramonti at Fie, where the peaks are beginning to shoulder the clouds for space.