We woke up with the sun rising over Dolomites. Our hostess had our breakfast ready and her two beautiful kids were running in and out just talking and playing. We took off toward Trento knowing we wanted to find wineries to taste the area wines and cheeses. The first one we came to was the Family Winery of the B&B we stayed at, Mazarado. It was huge and as we expected, very nice. From there we continued on SS12 heading up into the mountains. We quickly found a second winery and wellness hotel. We stopped and had a glass wine and olives. Very tasty, after finishing, we then continued to go up, up, up into the mountains. Kirsten was hoping to find a farm that would have a cheese tasting or some samples. Well that didn’t ... read more

Due to Giro De Itali “Italy’s Tour De France” was ending in the town of Riggamore we were up and on the road by 7 AM. Oh bye the way Lance Armstrong is riding in the Giro De Italy so Tour de France is looking good Lori!!!!!!!!. Spectators were already lining the road for the bike races. We drove pretty much up and over the mountain to the Autostrada and headed to Florence. We were in Florence by 10:30 AM and trying to find our way to the Centro, missed our turn, werer lost and the phone rang. It was Hedi and Bill they were in Karlsruhe with Sven and Eva. I ask them to call back in 30 minutes, were trying to find parking spot. Ok, Kirsten found the Centro and she found a parking ... read more

We had a very enjoyable breakfast at La Marguerite, eating homemade jam, onion foccicta and breakfast rolls. It was delightful and we’ll always remember La Marguerite. While we were sitting there we decided to head up into the mountains as we made our way toward the Cinque Terra. The drive was very scenic and we stopped at Sestri Levante and purchased bread and sweet rolls for lunch. They opened our bottle of wine and we drove to the water and sat on the coast and had lunch. After lunch we continued on to the Cinque Terra and drove into Corniglia. This is the center town of the five towns “Cinque Terra”, we decided that we would stay in the center and walk the first half one day and the second half the next. We dropped the ... read more

After we had a hearty breakfast and planned out our day, we were checking out and Kirsten picked up a different map of the area. Well, those well made plans went out the window as we headed down the road. The map was of the Strada Romantica, this has 11 stopping points through the Piedmont area too numerous to mention. However there was one that deserves to be mention, stop 5, “On the road between the Alps and Hills”. We took the wrong turn and after 5K we came to a dead end. There was a beautiful chapel and small restaurant. After viewing the chapel, we were drawn to the restaurant by voices of laughter and singing. We entered the restaurant and saw 6 older men we all sitting around a table singing and laughing. We ... read more

We’re still struggling with the clutch. We only stalled 4 times today, one was on the boarder of Switzerland and Italy. Yeah, right when the Poliza was watching. It has rained all day, we drove around Lago Maggorio. We stopped at Orto and viewed a park (at the very tippy top of the mountain) that has 20 chapels for St Francis of Assisi. It was very impressive all built around 1650 -1700. We then drove to Novara, had a cup of coffee during a down pour, we visited the Doumo the Romanesque and Baroque architecture is the best I’ve ever seen. (LOL), As we were leaving Novara we started heading toward Genoa, Kirsten decided in the middle of a roundabout that she remembered the book Carl gave us. It recommended Asti as a stopping point. So ... read more