Blogs from Trentino Alto Adige, Italy, Europe - page 11

The mountains of Italy are lovely in the summer and the winter. You can go on lovely walks and sample some great food in the summer or skiing and walking with snow shoes still sampling some great food in the winter. This weekend I had the opportunity to go walking in url=http://www.villnoess.com/en/summer/our-valley/Holiday-Val-di-Funes-Valle-Isarco-Alto-Adige-Dolomiti.aspVal di Funes in the Puez-Geisler Nature Park. Our walk started through a forest along a stream, I believe to be called Brogles Brook, with continuous and beautiful views to the Giesler Peaks or Gruppo delle Odle, depending on whether you fancy speaking German or Italian. Our intended destination was to go straight to Giesler-Alm/Rifugio delle Odle (never mind that the sign clearly pointed in the other direction) but we took a wrong turn (or the longer way depending on how you want to look ... read more

Here we are, sitting on a train on our way to Roma!!! It'll be a long day of trains since we've had to transfer a few times. It seems like a lot of ticket offices don't really know what they're talking about and we're talked to travellers who are all being told different things. For example we were told we couldn't buy our tickets all the way to Rome since we were in France and switching in an Italian town. We talked to people who bought tickets from Florence to Rome! So we show up at the station hoping there is room on the soonest train to Rome and we got lucky! And we're pleasantly suprised that the train isn't the crapbox train we've had the last few travels, and we're heard italian trains are terrible! ... read more

We had an easy ride into Cesenatico on Saturday where a bike exhibition was being held and wandered through the area to checkout all the latest bikes and bling on display. You could spend a fortune and still not get all you desire. Back to the hotel after lunch and watched the final 50K of the Giro stage. Early night as we need to get up at 04.00, breakfast at 04.45 and on the bus by 05.00 to the start of the Nove Colli (nine climbs) at 06.00. We have quite a few doing the 130K and 9 of us are doing the 200K. The Nove Colli is now in its 40th year and is one of the Gran Fondo held throughout Italy. It consists of 2 distances of 80 or 130 mile (130 or 205K) ... read more

On our final full day together, we again started with a lovely breakfast before the skiers headed out. My dad and I relaxed for a little while, before heading into town to take a few pictures. I hate to use the word “cute” to describe the town, but it really is - there is much of the chalet type architecture you would expect (similar to some of those beautiful towns you see on travel programs in Switzerland and Austria). After getting the shots I wanted, we figured it was time to head up to our lunch destination for the afternoon, La Para. Our hostess had told us that it wasn’t too high ("only" halfway up the mountain), so I wasn’t too worried. But as we started to ascend, I knew I was in trouble. Big, big ... read more

Friday 2nd October Our final alpine pass in Switzerland Although we have another mountain road pass ,the Ofen,at 2149 metres to get over today to get to Italy and tonights accommodation, it won’t present a great deal of climbing for RR as we are already at about 1800 metres at Silvaplana.This will also be the final mountain pass that we need to negotiate in Switzerland on this adventure. It has dawned another beautiful day and we have to keep pinching ourselves to remind us that on all the days we have been travelling since 19th April that we have had only 3 days when it has been too wet to get about sightseeing. Whilst it is fine and sunny it is also pretty cool outside in single digits but the prospect for Italy is much warmer ... read more