Originally posted on Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 05:17 AM NST.
2005? What is this?

As can be seen below, we’ve been doing quite a bit of driving.

Note: This map actually covers the whole trip. Start in Venice then west & south. Currently going North into the mountains.

After a bit of trouble navigating our way out of Verona, we were quite happy to find the lake (Lake Garda, the first of three lakes – we’ll be visiting the other two after we leave the mountains).

Most of the pictures this time are from the east side of the lake and the river valley up to Trento. Note that there are multiple small towns on route, but we’ve only noted two on the progress map.

The next bit of the trip, from Cavalese up to Cortina, was a challenge. Before going into the mountains, it was hard to not notice the storm clouds. With the rainy weather, switch-back roads and crazy oncoming tour bus drivers we made much slower progress. Near the peak of one of the passes, the clouds parted just long enough for Kim to get a picture.

The entire area from Trento eastward seems to be in low season. Many of the businesses (including hotels and restaurants) cater to the winter sports crowd, so they’ve closed the shutters (read: been boarded up). It’s been hard to find a meal at times, and the inns that are still open seem delighted to see a visitor and immediately cut their rates in half. In Cavalese, we stayed at a place that was shutting down their last few rooms on the day we left.

As soon as you turn east off the Italian Autostrata from the Adige Valley that connects Trento to Bozen (Bolzano), the roads get very tiny, and every town has two names – the Italian one, and the Austrian-German one. The landscape, the houses, the people – everything becomes more German (or southern german – Austrian-German – the funny hats, the chocolate, the strudel). Sometimes you are spoken to in Italian, sometimes in German, sometimes in English. I can stare back at a person with a dumb look equally well, regardless of the language they’re speaking.

Randy

NOTE: Read more about the region we’re entering into at Wikipedia.

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