Sails

If Venetian waters are populated entirely by noisy, wake-producing powerboats and a few romantic gondolas, Lago di Garda's waters are sprinkled, anytime during those sweet days that come along, with perky white sails. We walked just past a rectangular harbor, thick with bobbing masts, to the local sailing-club clubhouse---which gladly served wine or espresso and maybe calzone to non-member outlanders like ourselves. And so we sat there next to the water's edge and sipped, and visited casually with one of the movers and shakers of the place (he easily identified each of the kinds of boats we wondered about, and suitably imressed us with his plans to sail trans-Pacific for a year, in a vessel he'd set his eye on to purchase in New Zealand), and enjoyed the scenery, part of which was a "bunching" (traffic report lingo) parade of future sailors, straggling out from a cove somewhere to an open expanse of water where, presumably, classroom instruction would be translated into learning. Sweet, bucolic moments, punctuated by this one little gal's violently wrenching her tiller back and forth, like a vigorous fish determined to propel itself violently forward with thrashing tail since its other apparatus seemed ineffective: the little boat's boom (that horizontal beam that spreads the canvas sail), unattended, swung listless in the breeze). I don't know whether this kind of high-calorie effort resulted in much forward motion, but the ongoing struggle was a delight to watch.

A probably not very interesting observation touching our slightly curious room, which I haven't really described as it deserves.... There's a LAVAZZA coffee maker in here, never used before our arrival. It wants capsules (not unlike the Keurig machine system used by beloved friends yonder, or the less-known but IMHO better tasting Nespresso models elsewhere in the world, far from Costco's cartons of refills which go on periodic sale). Our hostess obligingly set up the gadget for our use, and gave us several Lavazza capsules. Hmm. Then yum.

Since we weren't assured that more such seminal needs would be forthcoming from her (four a day at the least), I set about finding some to purchase. Walked into a shop in the village nearby, whose signage and window promised all sorts of coffee resources/goodies. Nope, but did I think maybe of looking at that more substantial store a little south of the main clutch of establishments, as little as half a kilometer away? Sheesh, okay. Plod, plod, plod, et cetera. "Well, actually no, but surely the fairly major Conad store would have it; we've seen Lavazza on their shelves." Desperation was setting in and determined not to return emptyhanded to my encouraging spouse, still seated in front of those now-far-distant tourist shops I left an hour ago, I pushed on for another kilometer or so. And, yay, they had a whole row of capsule options, with Lavazza's branding printed on. Calloo, callay! I got a lot of heart points on this day's outing....

Except these were half-depth ones that I had gotten thirty of, all neatly packed into their promising Lavazza carton.. Grr. The machine refused to dignify my effort with these, by even trying to perform. The lights blinked a few times, then just sat there staring back at me, in an impasse that I knew I had lost. I ended up cutting open every one of those little foil covered gadgets, tapping their little plastic bottoms with a tiny spoon, emptying each into a clean and dried quart ziplock baggie, for use with the emminently trustworthy but also emminently messy hand pump espresso machine, several days ago optimistically packed away in my suitcase. I'll show them.