Italy part 1 - Potatoes in the Dolomites

+1300km or some 5% of road covered!!!!

Thursday, Oct 16

As promised, Alessio let us take the train from Innsbruck to Brennero. Those 40mn in train saved us probably 3 hours of suffering as the Astrian-Italian border is a horrible high pass, too hard to cover especially when we still have 100km after that.

So we sit comfortably in the train for the first 40km and started cycling around 11AM. We still have the cycling path for most of the first 80km. The nice weather is still with us. It was easy util we got out of Vipiteno. Then, it was the most horrible pass ever (I know that lots of worse things are still to come but this one was hard...). We struggled during 1h45 on a never ending uphill where I passed the worst tunnel, the longest 450m ever of my life, tunnel of which every meter was gained in pain and fear. I had to stop 2 or 3 times when cars approached because I couldn't even hold my handlebars straight.

Our suffering ended finally in Castelrotto after some 90km. The deliverance came along with 10km of downhill till Fie allo Schiliar. The counter showed 100,56km when we finally reached Alessio's mum's house. It was for the first time that we exceeded the fateful limit of 100km.Here, we had 2 relaxing days with nice walks in forests, good traditional sud-tyrol food, wine and hospitality. 

Saturday Oct 18

We left Fie around 5:30 PM. Alessio's mom took us through some horrible passes, from the car's window, I look out and feared for what it might be if I had to cycle over all that.

We started cycling for real :-) when the sun already set, the Rosengarten had lost its final flamboyant reflection and become paler and paler peaks under the darkened sky. 

We went downhill for most of the time of those 15km but I had to confess that I felt quite uncomfortable going down the curving road in the dark. I particularly hated cars arriving from the opposite direction with their dazzling lights. Fortunately they are not so many....

We arrived finally at home a bit after 7 PM. Here we started two weeks of "usual holidays" of hiking 

cycling

picking mushrooms

wonderful home-made food

going out with friends.... 

The Dolomites are simply an wonder. The hikes are sometimes quite challenging but I could not help myself from being amazed and feeling so lucky in front of such impressive views. 

The weather, as usual, is magnificent with beautiful honey-like sunshine; I feel like I could almost taste its sweetness. 

One negative point is that our budget doesn't allow us fancy restaurants anymore :-( :-(. But I think I should draw a cross on that matter (snif snif)

We decided to stay here for an another week, so still some more days before we hit the road again!!!!