Day 13 - Trifecta

Today promised to be another wonderful day on the bike. As we navigated to the bike path for a southerly route today, it was cool in the morning warming up in the afternoon, Just warm enough to not need a jacket at the start. A bit cloudy with the clouds burning off fairly quickly.

The total scheduled distance was 54 mi / 87 km. No need to really rush today. Maybe even get an ideal cycling trifecta; coffee stop in the morning, lunch followed by an ice cream stop in the afternoon.

For the past several days we have passed acres and acres of apples, as far as the eye could see. In previous days it's been corn, and now apples of every kind. The tree are trimmed narrow and vertical. Many under canopies.  Today, as we got onto the bike paths the endless rows of apples continued interspersed with vineyards occasionally.

We were heading south in a valley of steep vertical walls on either side. I'm guessing that this area was carved by glaciers in its past.

Lunch was about 27 miles / 43.5 km at a small cafe and we lounged there for as long as we could before heading out again. As we got back on the bike path the afternoon wind had kicked up and headed directly into our faces. The brisk wind cut down our speed a bit, but the wind kept us from getting too warm.

Three elements make up the perfect cycling day; Coffee, Lunch as Ice Cream.  At 41 miles / 67 km we pulled into Trento where almost within the shadow of Cattedrale Di San Vigilio E Duomo Di Trento we completed the trifecta, an ice cream stop. This portion of the trip is so different that earlier days of the trip. Early in the trip, it was sometimes difficult to find places to snack on the road, but now in Italy, it's not so difficult.

Ice cream of all

Back on the bike path, all day was on beautiful bike paths, it was a quick 14 miles to our destination in Ischia Sant'Ilario. Where my room has a gorgeous view.

A room with a view

Tomorrow we head off further south toward Lake Garda where because of road conditions, we have a couple of ferries planned.

Today's Photo's

Brian

brian@coxintl.com

Day 12 - Today We Needed To Share the Bike Paths

 Wow, what a difference a day makes. Woke up to some beautiful blue skies todays today and a low probability of rain and a route that contained a lot of downhill until lunch in Merano at the halfway point.

Before we departed, we needed to take a spin around the ancient fortified town of Glurns. Our hotel was just a short walk from the town's walls. As we stopped to look at the town we noticed many other cyclists. So far on our tour through France, Switzerland, Austria and Germany we haven't seen many cyclists, but in this little town there are many cyclists darting to and fro.

Inside the walled city of Glurns

Turns out that we're in a very popular location for cycling and that many cycling tour companies, such as VBT, takes advantage of the beautiful weather and cycling paths and we would be sharing the paths with them today.

As you can see in the above elevation profile, we dropped elevation all morning. After all the climbing that we've done in the past couple of days, it was nice to enjoy the downhill.

We met up with Chris and the van in the town of Merano where we scooted through busy streets until finding a nice restaurant where we munched on pizza, calzone and pasta. Then we were off to do some climbing.

As you can see in the elevation plot above, Eduard had placed us along a climbing route out of town. In southern California we have the San Gabriel mountains very similar to this climb.

To get to the start of the climb we exited Merano along some busy urban streets until reaching the major portion of the climb. None of the cycling touring companies were going to be joining us on the road. As we climbed the city fell away. The road was shaded with trees acting as a canopy. We settled into a constant 6 to 8% grade sometimes reaching 10% for short periods as it hugged the side of the mountain. Cars were our constant companions on the ride. They were respectful of the bicycles for the most part. Giving us room as they passed us. The winding road never gave us a clear view of the route, so it was difficult to judge how much higher we needed to climb. But finally we could feel the road start to level out a bit and a couple of buildings plus a gas station and we knew the top was near.

It was time to take some photos at the top as well as some photos to capture the view that we worked so hard to capture.

Me at the top

As well as Chris

We zoomed down the other side of the mountain to our destination of Bozen. We haven't had chance to see much of the busy city because is has been a long day and we needed to find the hotel take a quick shower and find a place for dinner.

Fortunately we are in the heart of the city and it was a quick walk along  pedestrian cobblestone streets to find a great dinner.

Today's Photos

Brian

brian@coxintl.com