We got everything packed up and ready to go and took a walk down to the lake.  Our street, via XX Settembre, goes right down to it.  So pretty:

We got coffee and walked a little bit before we returned to pack up the car and leave the keys in the mail box. 

Off we go to Belluno.

The 3 hour drive wasn’t bad at all.  We had extremely detailed instructions about where to park and the apartment location.  But, neither we, nor the owner, realized that there was a big festival for kids in the main square (where he had told us to park) and many of the streets into the center were blocked off.  There was no parking to be had anywhere!  

Finally Ken pulled the car into a spot too near the intersection to be legitimate parking and I got out to walk to the apartment to meet the owner Antonio.  Besides not having the right piazza for the address, and the masses of kids and people, I got totally lost.  With help from kind locals and a fire fighter, I walked around for about 40 minutes before I finally found the building.  Antonio showed me the fantastic apartment and walked with me back to where Ken was waiting.  He rode with us, giving directions, to a parking lot down and a bit out of town.  With our luggage from the car, we had to ride up 4 super long elevators and emerged at the top of the town about 10 minutes from the apartment.  On the walk he pointed out restaurants and shops, but I really have no idea where they were.  And everything was closed.  We finally settled in.  

Never having had lunch, we were pretty hungry.  Every restaurant Antonio suggested was closed so we just went for a walk.  It was around 5:00 so really the only open places were gelato and everywhere was super crowded from the fiesta. We spotted The Astor bar with a beautiful terrace and view of the Piave River.  The restaurant opened at 7:00, so we made a reservation and went out on the terrace to nurse our drinks–Aperol Spritz for Ken and Negroni for me, for an hour and a half.  The clouds were so beautiful.  

The dinner was hilarious.  Ken got a pasta dish, but the menu was mostly burgers (including an octopus burger) or pizza.  I got a really good fried chicken sandwich with fries.  We laughed a lot. It was a pretty room with interesting decor:

We would never have found our way back without our phones, and even with that assist, we got a bit lost (again).  

A crazy first day in this pretty mountain town.