Category: Europe

Our last overnight during what I refer to as our “bike week” was Riva del Garda. Although it is still in the Trentino-Alto Adige Region, it felt and looked far more Italian than towns like Castelrotto and Ortsei.

Oddly, much of Italy felt run down to me. Even the smaller mountain towns. Mostly, I think, because the way the buildings look. In many places, the stucco covering the building facades has fallen off, making the exterior look rather pock-marked. Riva del Garda wasn’t bad, but the building in the above image is a good example. As it the next image…

Those buildings were exceptions in Riva del Garda, which really was an extremely picturesque and charming place.

I love the mountains. Having grown up in Maryland, I’ve always enjoyed the water, too. So how could I not love a place like this, a lake surrounded by mountains.

The mountains loomed over the town, which made for some pretty cool pictures if I do say so myself.

This was the furthest south we’d been since leaving our friends at Lago d’Iseo on Tuesday. It was interesting to see palm trees scattered around the town.

The harbor area really was charming. I’m glad I chose this waterfront hotel for our stay.

I’m also glad I took some time for a stroll on Friday morning.The light was perfect.

It would have been nice to linger longer, but we wanted to get out before 10:00 AM. Since the hotel was in a pedestrian zone, it was closed to all motorized traffic after 10:00 AM. We really wanted to ride up to the front of the hotel instead of shlepping all of our stuff back to the bikes, which were parked about six blocks away.

I was sad to see bike week coming to an end. But I was also exhausted and looking forward to meeting up with Annelies and Yves again. So once we got all the bags and both trunks fastened back onto the bikes, off we went.

We were headed back to Rho, west of Milan, where we had to return the bikes. Hubby mapped out a very interesting route through the mountains for us. It was very scenic, but we didn’t stop along the way much. I didn’t have the helmet cam running either. It was just one of those days where I decided to relax and enjoy the ride.

As fabulous as our vacation was, our time in the Dolomites was far. Too. Short.

I absolutely LOVED the town of Castelrotto. I love the whole region. The atmosphere of the towns in Northern Italy stir something in me. A feeling I first experienced when we visited Austria and Germany a couple years back. I don’t just like the area, I really feel pulled toward the whole Bavarian region. That’s how I think of it. Yes, I know Bavaria is in Germany. But the German influence encompasses most if not all of Austria and extends into Northern Italy.

This morning, as I was drafting the blog post, I started wondering why. Sure, I really, really enjoy the  Lüftlmalerei — frescoes illustrating Bavarian myths, religious scenes and fairytales — that decorate the buildings. And I love the flower boxes. The mountains. The people. The food.

But there has to be more to it. I mean, the pull is strong.

Could it be my German ancestry?

That never dawned on me before, but a quick search on my maiden surname, Reichard, revealed something quite interesting. A couple of things, actually. (I’d probably learn more if I dug deeper.)

One, we have a family crest, which is pictured at the right. Two, the name “Reichard” was first found in Bavaria.

Yep, Bavaria. Maybe there is more to the lure of the region than I first thought.

Whatever the reason, I really like it there. I could spend months exploring Germany, Austria, and Italy. Especially the myriad charming small alpine towns like Castelrotto.

This is no place for a history lesson, so I’ll just share some pics with you.

Castelrotto, like all other towns in that region, has one large church with a steeple that really dominates the skyline. There could be more than one church, but there always seems to be at least one very large steeple at the heart of every small town.

Without the painting, that building would look like a white box. See the corner “stones”? They’re painted on. See the signs that appear to be recessed. It’s just paint. And the stonework around the lower windows? More paint. Click on the picture so you can get a closer look. The architectural trompe l’oeil painting totally fascinates me.

And I have never seen stacks of firewood elevated to an art form. At least they look that way to me.

You see stacks of firewood like this all across the region.

Unfortunately time was short. And the bikes were waiting patiently in the garage for us. We had quite a bit of ground to cover, so after another lovely breakfast at the Hotel Zum Wolf, we packed up and then off we went.

I’m not sure if this pass is really the gateway to the Dolomites, but it sure looks that way to me.

From there, we had a fabulous ride down the mountain. We went down for what felt like ever. But we must have started climbing again at some point because, before I knew it, we were at the Fedaia Pass.

In the next image, you may notice a bit of white atop a mountain. That’s now snow. It’s the Marmolada Glacier. At 10,968 feet (3,343 m), Marmolada is the highest peak in the Dolomites.

The pass was awesome, but the scene at Fedaia Lake, which is at the base of Mount Marmolada, was breathtaking.

The cloudy sky made for some dramatic photos. But then any sort of sky framing a glacier-fed lake surrounded by wildflowers  would make for a dramatic scene.

Remember, the lake sat atop the pass.

So we had more descending to do. Which meant…

Not that I am complaining. Switchbacks are fun.

I was amazed that we descended for such a long time. It was down, down, and down some more. Then, at some point, we started climbing again. And before we knew it, we were here.

I am not completely sure where “here” is, but I do know it was at the edge of the Dolomites National Park.

How did I know? There was a sign. 🙂

We carved our way through more mountains and eventually found ourselves back in the lovely valley between Trento and Bolzano.

It looked lovely, anyway. But it was hot. Apparently, Italy was in the midst of an unseasonably warm spell while we were there.

The valley was not far from our destination, thankfully.

We were to spend the night in a picturesque small town, Riva del Garda, which sits at the northern point of Lago di Garda (Garda Lake).

We stayed at the Hotel Sole. Which was very nice. Other than the fact that we couldn’t drive closer than a few blocks from the hotel. It’s located in the middle of a designated pedestrian zone. So we had to schlepp our luggage several blocks.

While we rested, night fell. We were pretty hungry, so we made our way around the little harbor (do lakes have harbors?) to a waterside cafe. We ate more pizza — surprise! — and then indulged in some Italian treats.

I thought the butterfly in the gelato was a nice touch. I can’t believe I didn’t think to save that toothpick! (My Mom always loved butterflies.)

The tables behind the tree in the image above is the pizzeria where we ate.

We strolled around a bit more before going back to our hotel and collapsing.

Motorcycling through the Alps is hard work. A labor of love, yes, but exhausting.

Tired as I was, I didn’t get to sleep right away. It was Thursday night. We were returning the bikes in Milan on Friday.

I was very curious to see what the next day would bring.

Are you anxious to see and hear more?

When telling people about our recent trip to Italy, everyone asked, “Where in Italy?” Answering with Northern Italy and the Dolomites pretty much resulted in blank stares. Most people that go to Italy for a summer vacation go to see places like Rome, Florence, and Tuscany. Few people I have spoken to are even familiar with Northern Italy. And most have no clue what the Dolomites are.

I didn’t know either until our last trip to Europe when we did the Edelweiss motorcycle tour in Austria, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. We enjoyed that so much that we asked our guide what tour he recommended for us next.

After a bit of research, I learned that the Dolomites, in Northeastern Italy, are part of the Alps. Once I saw an image or two, I was sold. I love the mountains anyway, but mountains with amazing motorcycle roads are the ultimate destination.

I was really looking forward to seeing the Dolomites with my own eyes. But since we arrived in Castelrotto very late on Tuesday night, we didn’t get to see much.

So imagine my delight when I peeked out of the window early Wednesday morning and saw this…

After a nice, leisurely breakfast, Hubby and I were off to explore. It was just as magnificent as I had imagined.

Not only was it gorgeous to look at, the roads were cool, too.

And that made this motorcyclist very happy.

It takes an awful lot of concentration and constant focus to ride a motorcycle. Especially when riding roads through the mountains where you encounter lots and lots of switchback (180 degree) turns. Like the one in the following picture that goes through a tunnel!

Since I had to commit my full attention to the ride, I didn’t get to dwell on the unhappy stuff lingering in my brain. Which was a good thing.

The sky was overcast off and on all day, but the scenery was still spectacular.

It’s a shame our luggage space was so limited, I could have brought this alpine frog home with me.

The next shot is at Falzarego Pass.

If you’d like to read more about our day and/or see more pics, you’ll have to pop over to my Appalachian Tours blog. I didn’t want to repeat the entire post here.

I did, however, create a little slide show to share. The images were shot with my helmet camera.

The show is about three minutes long. It has music, too. So make sure your speaker volume is adjusted before you click on the image to start watching.

As awesome as our jaunt into Switzerland was on Monday, I LOVED riding through the Dolomites. The Swiss Alps are pretty, too, but there’s just something about rocky, craggy mountains.

Stay tuned, there’s still lots more to come.

After a very long day on Monday, followed by dinner at around 11:00 PM, we visited with Annelies and Yves until the wee hours of the morning. Yes, we were exhausted, but we had lots of catching up to do. It’s hard when you only get to see your friends once a year or so.

It’s no surprise that we slept in a bit. I seem to remember it being close to 11:00 when Hubby finally rolled out of bed.

The day was looking a bit overcast. Neither of us were anxious to leave our friends. And since it didn’t look like it would take us all that long to reach our next destination, we had a leisurely breakfast. Which was really more like brunch, timing-wise.

By the time we were finally ready to leave, it was early afternoon. The morning clouds had burned off and it was actually quite warm.

Annelies was kind enough to take that picture of me looking all cool on my red motorcycle. And the next shot, which shows the road we’d ridden up in the dark the previous evening.

The ride should only have taken about four hours or so. Had we traveled a more-direct path.  But “direct” is rarely very scenic, so Hubby chose a somewhat slower, more circuitous route.

For the most part, the ride was unremarkable. Don’t get me wrong, it was a nice riding day. There was lots of interesting stuff to see, just not dramatic mountains and things like that.

Although we did get a nice view of the lake from the other side.

The route we chose took us south around the bottom of the lake and then gradually north / northwest to Castelrotto (Kastelruth in German).

I should have stopped to take more pictures, but I was rather enjoying the mental zone-out. All I really had to think about was keeping Hubby in my sights since he was leading the way. And riding, of course. Other than those two rather important things, I was free to just absorb the scenery.

We did take periodic rest breaks. I think we stopped here to have some water and a quick snack of trail mix, both of which we carried with us.

You can’t tell from that picture, but it was starting to look like rain off in the distance.  Weather in the mountains is always unpredictable and conditions can change rapidly, so we didn’t linger long.

I’ve told people over and over that the roads in Europe can get pretty narrow. Cars are smaller, for one thing. For another, the terrain can be a bit extreme. The road in the above shot, which is about as wide as a bicycle path in the US, was carved into the side of a small mountain. As Hubby said, “That road is so narrow, it only has one stripe!”

Yes, it really is a two-way street. There were pullouts periodically, which is good. Because if we encountered a car or truck coming in the opposite direction, someone would have to back up.

Luckily, the only oncoming traffic we saw was a motorcycle. The road went on like that for several miles. It was interesting. If you look at my right-side mirror, you’ll see that I am as far to the right as I could possibly get. At that point, even an opposing motorcycle would have been careful when squeezing past.

When we finally crested the top of that particular small mountain, this is the view that greeted us…

Here’s the scene as captured with my camera.

Fortunately, there was a place to pull off so we could take some pics and just enjoy the view.

The funny thing is, that was the only good view of that lake. We wound down the mountain after our break and didn’t see the lake again, other than very brief glimpses through the trees, until we had reached the valley floor.

The rest of the ride was nice, but the scenery wasn’t very dramatic. Interesting, just not dramatic enough to make me want to stop for pictures.

Except for the valley between Trento and Bolzano, that is. Where we should have stopped for a capture or two, but I just didn’t feel like it at the time.

We’d seen a vineyard or two during our travels the previous day. And cornfields. I never knew they grew so much corn in Italy. Rice paddies, too, around Milan. (By the way, I didn’t know they grew rice in Italy. That goes to show you how little research I did prior to our trip.)

I was tickled to see that the valley between Trento (southern end) and Bolzano (northern end) was covered in vineyards and orchards. When I say covered, I mean COVERED.

The next shot I found for you sort of shows it, but you have to click on that picture to get to the web site and then click on that picture. Or, you can click THIS LINK for a closer look.

Here’s another interesting shot…

It was gorgeous, really. And we kept coming across tractors pulling wagons full of grapes. It was cool. Just what one would expect to see in one of the major wine-producing countries in the world.

But honestly, by that time we’d been riding for HOURS. The day was getting late. I knew we were getting close to Castelrotto, too, so I just wanted to keep pressing on and get there already!

Alas, that was not to be. We hit Bolzano during what I suspect was rush hour. Though I am not sure since it was around 7:00 PM. With Bolzano (Bozen in German) being the capital city of the province of South Tyrol, it was pretty crowded. And traffic was a mess. Lucky for us, lane splitting and traffic avoidance is a-OK for motorcyclists in Europe, so we went around all of that and let the GPS re-calculate a route to Castelrotto for us.

Although we got to enjoy some very interesting, and VERY small, roads, we were slowly losing daylight. We ended up riding across an open meadow on the side of a mountain on another one of those bike-path-type roads, which led straight to someone’s house. Yep, a driveway.

So we backtracked. And backtracked some more.

I was starting to worry as hotel check-in closed at 10:00. And we still hadn’t found Castelrotto.

Once it was full dark, Hubby decided to stop and figure things out. That’s when he realized the GPS was missing a critical piece of road map. Castelrotto was on the next mountain. Only 11 kilometers away. As the crow flies. But we couldn’t fly, so Hubby got out the computer, downloaded the correct maps, got the route figured out, and off we went.

More switchbacks in the dark. Oh joy! 🙂

It was about 9:58 when we reached Castelrotto. But we couldn’t find our hotel, which was listed as the Hotel Zum Wolf.

As you can see by looking at the image above, which shows the front of our hotel, “Hotel Zum Wolf” doesn’t exactly jump out at you. Oh, and the front of the hotel is in a pedestrian-only zone, which meant we could not drive past the front of the hotel.

To make a long story short… Hubby chased down a passing Carabinieri car (national military police in Italy) and, after determining that they did speak a bit of English, asked for directions. It was about 20 past 10 by then. The policemen were tickled to learn that we were Americans riding BMWs (not Harleys), and they offered to lead us to our hotel. If we could wait a couple of minutes.

We didn’t have far to go. Of course, the hotel registration area was locked down by the time we arrived. I simply rang a buzzer and the proprietor, who could not have been more helpful, came down to let me in. I started rambling about why we were so late. She interrupted me to ask, very seriously, “Did the police bring you here?” What a hoot!

She felt sorry for us and upgraded us at no charge to a suite. She even helped us carry our stuff to the room. And told us about a great pizzeria that would be open until 11.

She only forgot to tell us one important thing…

In Italy, if you want your pizza sliced, you have to make a special request. We didn’t have cutlery in our suite. Not even plastic cutlery. And we were hungry. So we made do.

And that ended Day 2.

Hubby and I chose Italy as a vacation destination for two reasons. One, it was within driving distance for Annelies and Yves, our Belgian friends and traveling companions. And two, it would be a cool place to ride motorcycles. Since Annelies agreed that Italy would be a good place to meet, it seemed like a good plan.

Yves does have a motorcycle, but Annelies isn’t fond of riding on it with him. In fact, she’s not fond of him riding it solo. So we spent the first few days mostly alone.

I leveraged some of my pal Fuzzy’s prior travel experience and used Rent-a-Dream, the same company she used when she went to Italy. Rent-a-Dream works with the Italian BMW dealer Due Ruote on the outskirts of Milan.

Reasonably priced, very friendly, and quite accommodating, it was a great experience. Except for the location, which meant we had to drive through some crazy-busy traffic to start and end our journey. And what an experience the end was. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It took a little while for Diego, pictured with Hubby, to get the proper GPS mount set up, but he did it for us without complaint. Which was awesome. Diego was also nice enough to store our luggage for us. We took what clothes and stuff we needed for the first few days with us, but left our luggage with the rest of our stuff behind.

I hadn’t done much planning beyond labeling the major passes we’d like to hit and booking overnight accommodations. I would have planned routes right before we left, but things got a bit crazy. So Hubby did it. He then saved the routes into his computer and GPS. He led. I followed. I didn’t have to do much hard thinking at all, which was a good thing.

Those of you who don’t ride may think that left my mind free to wander. That’s somewhat true. But it couldn’t wander too much. Riding a motorcycle requires thought. Focus. There’s not much time left for thinking about other stuff. Especially when you are riding in a foreign country, through beautiful terrain, and a gazillion roundabouts (traffic circles). Man, does Italy ever have a lot of roundabouts!

Our first few days were all about riding. Sure, we’d enjoy the scenery along the way. But riding was the main focus.

Which is why we  only made a VERY brief stop at Lake Como, one of Italy’s most famous lakes.

The day was a bit overcast. But it was still a pretty sight.

As you can see, the lake is surrounded by mountains. It’s not all that far from the Alps, after all. The mountains surrounding the very large lake are sprinkled with towns of vary sizes along with a number of palaces and villas. Lake Como, in and of itself, would be a great place to spend a couple of weeks. But, since we were in Italy to RIDE, we spent about 15 minutes there.

No, we didn’t see George Clooney, Lake Como’s most well-known resident. To Americans, anyway.

It wasn’t long after leaving Lake Como that we started our climb into the mountains. It was a slow, but picturesque ascent through a variety of small towns and villages. After Lake Como, traffic thinned dramatically. To the point that we often had the road to ourselves.

Our first major pass of the day was San Bernardino. We took the old road across the pass, of course. A tunnel (4.1 miles long) was built in 1967, which diverted traffic from the old road.

We didn’t stop much along the way. Our first stop was sort of funny. We pulled into the parking lot of a gas station/convenience store to rest a bit and get something to drink. Hubby, with Euros in hand, went inside only to encounter a woman demanding that he pay in Swiss Francs. We forgot that we’d entered Switzerland. I don’t remember seeing a sign, but then we were on the back roads. She did accept Euros in payment, but gave him Francs for change.

Anyway, since we didn’t stop much, I’ll have to share a few helmet cam pictures with you.

Now, I’ve told people the roads are pretty curvy. And there are lots of switchbacks, which are 180 degree turns, zig-zagging up the side of the mountains. There are few, if any, roads in America quite like these roads that criss-cross the Alps. Note the road in the above picture trailing off to the right.

It was sort of odd to see a lake at the pass. Not close to the pass, at the pass.

Just about all of the major mountain passes have restaurants. Some of the more-popular ones have gift shops, snack bars, etc. Remember, this used to be a major route across the mountains.

After a short break, it was on to our next pass.

The road down was just as curvy and pretty as the ride up had been. Splugen Pass wasn’t too far from San Bernardino. Much to my delight, as we neared the top of Splugen Pass, I saw cows.

Yes, cows. On top of the mountain.

I yelled to Hubby through our helmet-to-helmet communicators, “There are COWS on this here mountain!”

I barely heard him say, “Oh boy,” before I screeched to a halt for some pictures. How could I pass up THAT photo op?

Of course, they came over to say hello. And they spoke English! So I said “moo” right back.

What a pretty setting for cows.

Hubby hadn’t realized I had stopped until he was a few hundred yards up the road. So I had to take a self-portrait. You can sort of see the helmet cam, which is mounted on my helmet (imagine that!).

It’s easy to tell which of these pics were taken with the helmet cam by the bug or dirt splat in the upper right-hand corner. Sorry, but I didn’t feel like Photoshopping them all out.

I didn’t linger too long. We still hadn’t reached the top of the pass.

I was quite surprised to discover that Splugen Pass was actually on the border between Italy and Switzerland. Now, had I been thinking, I would have stopped for a shot of the Switzerland sign.

Oh well.

I really like the next shot, too. If you look closely, you can see the road off to the right. That’s where we were headed. More curves!

See the thick whiteness in the pic? At first, I wasn’t sure if that was snow or fog. But, as we got closer, I could tell it was fog. I just had no idea why it was hanging there like that.

Northern Italy was once part of Austria. Most people don’t realize a large part of the Italian population speak German. Many of the towns have two names. Splugen is the German and Spluga is the Italian version. I had a German paper map, which I referred to on occasion, but the GPS was using the Italian names. Talk about confusing!

I was tickled to see that Splugen had cows, too. Sort of hazardous keeping your cows on the road, though.

Not long after that shot, the Go Pro (helmet cam) battery died. But we were riding through fog anyway.

We thought we were close to our destination, which was Annelies and Yves’ rental apartment at Lago di Iseo. Unfortunately, we underestimated. We didn’t arrive till something like 10:30 PM.

It was dark. And their apartment was perched on the side of a mountain. Which meant switchbacks in the dark.

THAT was interesting. I was just glad we knew how to ride on those roads. It’s not as straightforward as you might think.

By the time we arrived, we needed that beer. Lucky for us, Annelies and Yves were kind enough to stop in Austria for us specifically to buy our favorite Edelweiss Hefeweizen (wheat beer).

And that ended day one.

We’d ridden something like 400 kilometers or around 250 miles. That might not sound like a lot, but they were some tough miles. You don’t just coast through turns like that, you have to work it. Trust me.

We were exhausted, but very happy to see our pals, who not only bought our favorite beer, but also delayed dinner for us.

Did I mention what great friends they are?

NEXT: On to Castelrotto (Kastelruth)