Ride Day 7: Prato, Italy to Bolzano, Italy

It is mostly downhill from Prato to Bolzano.  And while we are getting fairly deeply into northern Italy, the germanic influence is still dominant and the villages all have an alpine character.  The language is a dialectic blend of German and Italian.



It was a great downhill ride and we made it to Bolzano in the heat of the day.  And it is really nicely hot.  We got pretty lost in Merano and Bolzano, but eventually made our destination.  We're having technical difficulties with both camera and computer so the blog might be limited to text for a day or so.

Working on it...

Ciao.

OK, we're back online with our technical problems fixed (we think...).  Here's the updated post from yesterday's ride from Prato (actually Glorenza) to Bolzano.

It was all downhill from Glorenza to Bolzano yesterday.  We dropped around 1250 meters, climbed about 250, but that balances out nicely in our favor.  It was smoking hot, too, but Bolzano and Trento are renown for their summertime heat.  As we followed the Adige river we rode through beautiful alpine valleys loaded with apple orchards and vineyards.

Run down castle near Glorenza

This valley is famous for its marble

The geology is changing from high alpine to agricultural valley

We passed through Merano, which is a fairly large town and as almost predictable we got super lost.  I’m not even sure how we can get so turned around sometimes, but we always seem to find a way.  After about 30 minutes of doing circles, we asked the GPS to figure it out for us and we eventually made it to the route again.

We stopped for ice tea in a little village and after that got lost again.  Our usual default is to “go to the river” since the bike routes usually follow the rivers.  We found a small road that wasn’t the path we were looking for, but which had the river on one side and the railroad tracks on the other.  We were set.

It didn’t take long to get into Bolzano and to get lost again.  For the first half of the day we had passed, and then had been passed by, a German family who are cycling to Rome.  Just when we got to Bolzano they road up behind us.  They said that they knew the way but after about 5 minutes they rethought that.  I guess everybody gets lost.  We said “buon voyage” and struck out on our own.  We eventually almost ran over a girl and while we apologized, we asked if she could direct us to the zentrum.  She was so helpful and nice, she walked with us about 10 blocks out of her way to show us the bike road the led straight to the main piazza in town.  So nice!

We had a hotel last night, kind of old and stately but very nice.  Air conditioned, too, which was a huge benefit in the heat.  All things considered, a fairly routing day of riding.  We covered about 120 km.

Our home for the night in Bolzano

The bike wouldn't fit in the bike room, so they left it in the lobby.  I think it dresses up the old place
pretty nicely