WELCOME TO THE HOTEL CORTINA It’s zero-eight-hundred hours on Cortina d’Ampezzo’s Corso Italia. A string of pretty bells are ringing in the clocktower to wake the village. The morning sun is pink on surrounding peaks, and there’s a breeze lifting up from the Adriatic, soft and perfumed, like the scent on last night’s feather pillows.
Just as the gondola’s bull wheels begin to spin, and just as the steamed milk for morning cappuccinos begins to gurgle, a throaty engine revs once, twice, three times, destroying the Italian idyll. Tires spin, horns toot. Someone shouts Andiamo! Let’s go!
Above the Corso, wooden shutters are thrown open, heads lean out. Armani-clad bellhops rush to lobby windows and, in sidewalk cafés, women in fur hats blink in mystification. The noise, that offending noise!…
