Moena: the town that spellcheck's never heard of

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Geo: 46.3754, 11.6579

The plan for the day: see the Giro come up the Passo del Tonale (a cat 2 climb), we needed to get rolling pretty early in the day. We tried to stop into a shop across the road, to get a shirt that we'd spied n the window the night before, but they weren't open yet, and we needed to boogie, so I'll need to search for it online or something.
We swung into the local supermarket to grab something for lunch (jam, and bread, to pair with our peanut butter), then we were off toward the Passo di Gavia, as a shortcut to get us over to the Tonale before the boys came by.

Here's the thing about mountain passes in the Alps: they're not necessarily open year-round.

We didn't realize it was closed until we got to the start of the actual road up the mountain, about 15 minutes outside of Bormio.

Sigh.

So, we turned around, and headed back through town, the other way. Dejo found us a shortcut that went up the Mortirolo, As these things tend to be, this was a twisty, turny, tiny mountain road. Yea, though it's a 2-way road, it's not always what you'd call 2 lanes. And sometimes you can see up the switchback to see if anyone's coming, and sometimes you can't.

So you kinda get used to being prepared to be surprised.

Cyclists also favor these roads, because they go Up.

They may or may not be good vehicles to further marital communications.
For example: "You're really close to the edge over here!" "I'm also really close to this car over here!"

But we made it without any actual incidents (though for a moment, I wondered how far we might need to back down, to allow a tractor to squeeze by).

It's a very different feel than the Stelvio, all set about with pretty trees and all.

When we got to the road where we intersected the Giro route, we got stopped by the nice police, because this is the road where we intersected the Giro route. And they were only about 15 minutes away.

We parked at the little lot about 100 meters away, and Dejo realized that we might have a pretty interesting view of the race, if we climbed over the guard rail and got a bit closer to the edge of the 15' wall that formed one edge of the roadway.

We had been sitting there no more than 3 minutes when the peloton came by. It was a very interesting view of the race that we hadn't had before. And the Colorado flag that I was holding got a smile from one of the riders (I think perhaps Peter Stetina, who lives in Boulder).

One the race was past, the roads opened pretty soon to traffic, so we hopped in line. We knew we would be prone to slow and/or stopped traffic, seeing as how we were right behind the race.

What we hadn't thought about was that there might still be bottles on the side of the road, discarded by riders who were anticipating fresh drinks up ahead.
Other cars in front of us were thinking about this, and looking for said bottles, so every so often, the car in front of us would stop with no warning, and a passenger would hop out, cross the road with very little regard for the possibility of oncoming traffic, and retrieve the bottle.

We played along for the one bottle we spotted, which turned out to have been run over, so wasn't much use.

The drive wasn't too bad, all things considered. We did have a couple of navigation snafus, where I had heard Miss Google Maps say one thing and Dejo told me another, so naturally I followed the instructions of my Cute Blonde Boy.

But those wrong turns notwithstanding, we made decent time.

There was one point where we got stopped for about 20 minutes, as the road in front of us was about to be used by 180 cyclists and the dozens of vehicles they bring along with them, but then we got to continue into some really beautiful country.

Our hotel in Moena (no, spellcheck, not Modena -- but thanks for your help) was the Hotel Dolomiti, and feels more posh than we had anticipated. I mean, there's an actual vanity countertop, not just a little shelf. Fancy. And a tub. Like, a soaking tub. Super-fancy!

We had a little walk around this adorable town, and then found ourselves hungry. We were hungry too early, as we're not European, and most restaurants aren't open for dinner until 7:30 or 8 pm. So we had an appetizer at the tavern connected to our hotel (a meat & cheese platter that was really delicious and really hearty). My small beer was gone pretty quickly, and I recalled having seen apfelsaft (apple juice -- German is spoken quite a lot in these parts) in a store down the street.
Since my German is way better than my Italian, I popped up to the waitress hanging out by the doorway, and chirped "Kann ich ein apfelsaftgespritz haben, bitte?" Since we saw most signs in both Italian and German, and we heard several folks speaking German, I presumed that my request would be understood.

I know you know how this ends.

She looked at me with That Look, and I explained, more slowly, that I'd like a.p.f.e.l.s.a.f.t. , mit mineralwasser. Bitte.

She finally got it, and said, "Apfel spritz?"

Si! Per favore.

So, it turns out that there's this liqueur popular in these parts, that's called Aperol. And people commonly drink it with fizzy water.

I don't understand why.

It's horrible stuff.

It masquerades at first as something palatable, being all orangey and fruity. But a millisecond later, it sheds that disguise, and shows its true colors, all bitter and blech.

I left most of that in the glass.

We decided to try our luck elsewhere for actual dinner.

There was a pizzeria just across the river that was pretty decently reviewed on Trip Advisor, so we took our time getting over there (as it seems 8 pm was their general start time for dinner). We were seated in this quirky little place, and ordered pizza.
We thought maybe we'd just share one, as we weren't super hungry after our appetizer, but were advised that it really wasn't big enough for two.

24 hours later, we still have a box of leftover pizza in our room because we couldn't fit it into the mini fridge.

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Photos

Interesting vantage point
Near Monno

Cute little alpine town
Moena, all dressed up for the Giro