Leaving Italy over the Alps

Europe » Italy
September 12th 2005

Published: September 12th 2005

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Vermont Family

The Start of our Bike Trip

We eat on a rooftop garden overlooking the Roman ruins of Susa, beneath the Alps as we get ready to leave Italy. This is the area of some of the great mountain stages of biking--Alp de Huez ,Sestriere, Col de Galibier and a bunch of others (the local bike guide lists a nice route of 202 km and 3300 m of climbing over 7 passes!). We will take a hopefully less demanding route through Bardenecchia, an Olympic site for snowboarding ,and over 1750 m, from the 500 m site here.

Yesterday we got out of Torino successfully by doing the Sunday ride when traffic is low, then up the Dora River on mostly bike route (altho like so often, finding the route took more effort than the route seemed worth at times. Eventually, it was a nice way to avoid cars, andonce the downpour startedafter lunch, it was good to be away from much traffic as the roads here can hold an amazing amount of water on their surface.

I want to upload pix, so this is all I can write as we are using someone elses laptop. By this evening, we plan to be in France, probably in