There are familiar images that often come to mind when people think of Italy, most of them tied to rolling hills and Tuscan villas. What I describe here breaks that stereotype.
We spent the past weekend in Trento, a city so far north it nearly reaches the Austrian border. On our first visit a year ago, we were briefly unsure whether we were still in Italy.
Signs often appear in both Italian and German. Local menus feature many ingredients we didn’t immediately recognize, and beer seemed as popular as—or more popular than—wine in cafés and bars.
Yet despite those differences, Trento feels unmistakably Italian, and the surrounding landscape is breathtaking.
The mountains, alpine lakes, and rugged outdoors reminded us strongly of our home in British Columbia, while the centuries-old architecture made it unmistakably European.
