Kilometers - 202
Passes - Passo di Pordoi, Karerpass, Nigerpass, Mendelpass
This is a view from our hotel in Arabba. They built this garage especially for the motorcyclists. Check out the Dolomite peaks in the background!
At this point I was beginning to be concerned about my ability to remember where these pictures were taken, so I thought getting some street signs into the picture would help. We're on our way down towards Bolzano. Unfortunately the towns listed on the sign are too small to appear on my map, but it does give the name of the castle that is off to the right out of this picture.
Paige rode down a little way toward the castle, here she is coming back. The castle is the rectangular blocky structure on top of the hill just above Paige in the picture.
We rode through Bolzano without stopping because it was really warm and slow city traffic was annoying. On the other side we decided to pause for lunch in Appiano/Eppan, a beautiful Italian village. Here we're headed toward a pedestrian zone.
Another dive to eat lunch in :-) Shucks, we're a whole 15 feet from the fountain (behind Paige.) No, we didn't consume three bottles of wine with lunch... we did however each consume the contents of one of these green glass litre bottles of miner water, and we needed it after the heat we'd been riding through!
On our way back to the motorcycles we took a detour to look at this church. David really liked the green and cream-colored glossy tiles on the steeple.
After lunch it was a fairly quick ride up to Passo di Mendola, where this interesting antique shop was located. As we were getting back on our bikes Richard and Leslie rode up so we got back off the bikes and decided to have some ice cream and cola at the little restaurant there. Richard picked up the tab, very kind of him!
After we finished our ice cream David walked over to the antique shop with Richard and Leslie, and Richard took this picture of David with the suit of armor. This region is the metalworking district, and there were several shops with brass and copper items for sale... you can see the copper pots in this picture.
Finding the hotel this evening was another adventure. Following the instructions brought us to a huge traffic accident on the Autobahn in Trento, which we quickly avoided. We tried another direction, and found ourselves back at our starting point in Trento. Paige was leading at this point and we lucked out and found a local who agreed to guide us to the correct road. (Paige stopped a motorcyclist and asked if he speaks English, to which he replied "Yes", not the usual reply of "no" or possibly "a little".) With his help we found our way up a fun curvy road to the hotel. The whole area is ski-resort, and along the way we rode under what appeared to be a step-on (as opposed to sit-on) ski lift. We really wanted to see that thing in operation!