Benvenuti Benvenuto

I’m in the process of reading ”The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini ,” the memoir of the Florentine goldsmith/artist (1500-71) who was a contemporary of the great Italian artists Michelangelo, da Vinci and Rafaello. Cellini comes to mind because I just walked down a street named after him, which is how I got from the main Trieste train station to this Internet shop just off this port city’s grand piazza.

Trieste, which bridges Slovenia to the east and the Adriatic Sea to the south, is a big change from the mountain towns that we visited over the weekend. If you read any guide book, you’re likely to come across phrases such as “wonderful” and “great” and even the occasional “awesome” to describe the vistas offered in nearly every direction. Cellini, who was no stranger to self-promotion, would have understood the excited utterings of such guide-book authors: He used the same words, though possibly not awesome, to describe his own works. And even himself.

As far as his autobiogrphy goes, Cellini never visited the two towns that we stayed in: Bolzano on Friday and Saturday, Cortina on Sunday. Both are probably the least Italian towns that you can imagine. Of course, what with the shifting borders of the 20th century, the whole of Italy’s northernmost Alto Adige region boasts just as much Austrian heritage as it does Italian. In fact, virtually every hotel clerk, waiter and newspaper vendor asked us if we were from (choose one) Australia, Austria, Germany or England. We got used to replying, simply, “Canada.”

But the views: On the drive from Bolzano to Cortina, which is less than 70 kilometers, I spent more than three hours guiding our rented Fiat over more switchbacks than both legs of Maui’s famous road to Hana. And being the good place-droppers that we are, we compared everything we saw to (choose any and all) the Sierra Nevadas, the Cascades, the high prairies of western Montana and Wyoming’s Jackson Hole region. In contrast, heading back down to sea level today, I looked at the surrounding crop fields and said, “I-5, northbound to Portland.” My wife, Mary Pat, agreed.

She agreed, too, that this trip across the northern tier of Italy, through the mountains known around here as the Dolomiti , has been well worth the effort. Even for those of us who don’t hike. The majestic mountains peaks and alpine valleys, not to mention the Germanic feel of the obsessively clean village streets, would be hard for even Benvenuto Cellini to describe. He’d probably just say… wonderful.