Day 8 - Treviso to Mestre

Fontana Delle Tette
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fontana_Delle_Tette

This morning after breakfast, we dropped our bags in the lobby and went out to explore Treviso on our bike before leaving town.  We found the famous Fontana Delle Tette (above), saw the Church of St. Lucy, and took some pictures.  While still in Treviso, we heard a pop, followed by quite a bit of racket coming from the back of the bike, and then we were unable to pedal.  John discovered that the derailleur shifted the chain right off the cassette and into the spokes causing one of the spokes to break.  John immobilized the broken spoke and we were back on our saddles in a few minutes.

We left Treviso on the path by the Sile River, and saw lots of birds in the river.  Many of the birds had babies that were so cute.  There was some sort of underwater vegetation growing in the river that the birds were diving down to eat for themselves and for sharing with their babies.

We explored a few towns along the way and added some additional km's.  We saw more vineyards, corn fields, and orchards today.  Farm tractors, and even an occasional combine, were a common sight on the roads today as it has been all week of riding (even in some of the larger towns).

Both Treviso and Mestre were very busy with traffic, but the drivers were pretty considerate of cyclists.  Almost everyone cycles here,  and there were as many bikes at the grocery as there were cars.

We rode around Mestre for a while and then to our hotel Ai Pini.  John removed our seats, pedals, and his GPS from the Deep, affectionately referred to as The Whale (we can't take credit,  as some other cyclists called this model the whale on their blog) and we said our goodbye to the bike.

We rode 332 km's in the six days this week as we pedaled from the northern Dolomite Mountains, dipping our toes into Austria on a side trip,  and on down to the sea in Venice.  We celebrated tonight with some local pizza.

Tomorrow we leave Mestre for Murano, sans Whale, and onto new adventures.

Bike route for today here.

Another old gate to the city of Treviso at the port which is now where our hotel is located

Bike sculpture outside Treviso

Outside St. Lucy 

Treviso

Riding on Bike path E4 today. 

Riding along the Sile River near Treviso

Link to video

Sue and John both scored a delicious ice cream bar after lunch in front of the local grocery store

Bike shop with handy bike Vending machine 

Vending machine with bike tunes, chain lube, and other bike supplies out in front of the bike shop

Day 8 Update

We finished our bike tour today but ran out of gas before we finished the blog.  We will finish the blog tomorrow morning.  Until then, enjoy this outtake from yesterday.

Vinyard outtake

Link to video

Day 7 - Valdobbiadene to Treviso

Riding through the vinyard in Valdobbiadene

Link to video

We started from Valdobbiadene in bright sunshine.  The route led us through the local vineyards before heading downhill.

Almost all the ride was on roads today, many of which were unpaved and ran along canals built to irrigate the grapes, corn, wheat and olive trees we saw on our ride. 

At about halfway through the 71 km day,  we headed sharply uphill which was a little diconcerting since the tour company directions said turn left and go downhill.  John checked Open Street Maps and we were going the right direction so we kept climbing.  The climb was short but towards the top the grade maxed out at 19%.

After descending back down, we had some flat roads before we climbed into Asolo, one of the most beautiful towns in Italy.  Coincidentally,  Valdobbiadene hosted Stage 14 of the 2015 Giro d'Italia and Asolo hosted Stage 11 in 2016.  We saw number of local cyclists climbing on both mountains doing training rides.

After having a nice pizza lunch in Asolo,  we rode aroud the small mountain top town and took some pictures before descending back down to continue our ride.

Near Montebelluna, we passed the Tempietto and Villa Barbaro, designed by Palladio.  The buildings and statuary were beautiful. Unfortunately The Tempietto wasn't open to tourists, at least today.  There were two fresco's on the outside that you could see, one in good condition and the other in bad shape.

We arrived in Treviso and went through on of the gates to the walled city a little after 6p.  After a little sightseeing,  we went to our hotel, cleaned up and went to a little brew pub for dinner. 

Tomorrow will be our last day of riding, then we will spend a few days walking in Venice.

See bike route here

Vineyards in Valdobbiadene

Hilltop village of Asolo near the top of the climb

Asolo, known as the Pearl of Treviso

View from Asolo

Fountain in Asolo Piazza

Asolo

Asolo

Asolo

Asolo

On the way out of Asolo

Asolo

Asolo

Asolo

Tempietto

Fresco at the Tempietto

One of the gates to the walled city of Treviso

Day 6 - Belluno to Valdobbiadene

Our preferred lunch stop in front of a local grocery store where we can get sometching to supplement a sandwich and get some water to fill up our water bottles.  We don't always find one at lunch time but we did today. 

Rain was forecasted for Belluna for today, and today's route promised climbs, so we intended to leave the hotel early this morning. 

However,  we discovered last night that the previously published Day 4 of this blog was overwritten by a draft when Sue inadvertently opened a previous draft in the Blogger App for Android.  So, we were up late last night,  but with good results.  We figured out how to get to a cached copy from Google's server and did that successfully from the hotel computer this morning before Google changed the cached copy.  We tried to get the cached copy last night on our phones (plus we tried a lot of other things too) but that functionality is not available from the Chrome mobile browser.

We started the 60 km ride about 10:30 this morning and got lucky with the weather.   Sunny skies all day and beautiful views made for a great trip from Belluna to Valdobbiadene.

We toured on roads today, since the route lacks dedicated bike paths.  For the most part the roads were quiet as they wound up and down the beautiful Italisn countryside (sometimes at greater than 10% grades).  The last 15 km section  of the route was on a fairly busy road.  Drivers were friendly overall, but there was much less stopping for pictures today because of the lack of safe places to stop.

Many of the Dolomite hillsides today were covered with grape vines.   We've entered the section of Italy where Prosecco and Asti are produced.  We had an excellent glass of Prosecco wine with dinner.   Omga Longa, the restaurant we chose, served pasta with sausage and mushrooms.  This may be the best pasta we've ever had.

Pictures below and buona notte!

See bike route here.

Look closely and you can see us on or bike in the mirror as we pass by

Much fewer views of the Dolomites today

One of the many houses we passed by today

Views on our route

Entering into Provincia Treviso near the end of the ride today

Grape vines all over in the town where we are staying overnight. 

City Center where we are staying tonight

Day 5 - Cortina - Calalzo - Belluno

Today we started off with excellent weather and John's great navigation thru Open Street Maps to direct us to the path.   We road  on the EU Bike Route 1 all day today, as we had much of yesterday.

The trail was very pretty,  most on the Old Dolomite Railway,  through it's tunnels and by its stone walls.  Some of the trail went through verdant forests and some through Italy's small towns in the Valle de Cadore.

Today, sometimes the trail was being repaired, or was closed by a rockslide, but the markings were very good and we only had to turn around once (due to a rock slide).

We rode to the railway station in Calalzo, losing what elevation we labored for yesterday and more.  Once we made it to Calalzo, we were transported by van to Belluno.  There is a new bike path between Calalzo and Belluno,  but the tour company rep said it wasn't completed and the roads were dangerous so we took their advice and took the transfer.

Belluno is lovely, with great cafes, historic buildings and a vibrant feel to it.  Tommorow we start out for Valdobbiadene and wine country.

Highlights of the day were the Olympic Ski Jump from the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina D'Ampezza,  lunch with a great view of the Dolomites from a bench just off the trail,  scoring new Dolimite themed jerseys at Intersport in Valle de Cadore, and dinner with tour mates at restaurant in Belluno.

Look at the route here.

Mountains overlooking Cortina

South of Cortina

Olympic Ski Jump from 1956 in Cortina

Wooded and paved section of trail

Beautiful Dolimites

Passed through many short tunnels on the trail today

Switch keeper's house from late 1800's 

Dolomites 

Goats right along the trail

Piazza in Belluno

Festive Belluno

Day 4 - Dobbioco - Heinfels, Austria - Cortina D'Ampezzo

Spectacular views were our reward for all our climbing today

Immediately after rolling out of our hotel this morning in Dobbiaco, John discovered that the rear derailleur would not shift. And even worse, it was stuck in the hardest gear on our biggest climbing day of the week. Not good.  Lots of slack cable at the rear pointed towards a classic cable brake except the cable wasn't broken at the shifter end like it typically is. After a couple of minutes John discovered that since the bike frame had couplers, the cable also had a coupling mechanism that the front half of the cable pulled out of. But, with no 2.5 mm hex tool on the multi repair tool, there was no way to repair the coupler. Then John remembered that he brought his full set of hex tools to put our seats and pedals on the rental bike.  In a few minutes the shift cable coupler was repaired and we were back on our way.

With the shifter cable repaired, we took a side trip that was not on our tour schedule. We had read about an 18th century covered bridge that was right off the Drauradweg trail, about 19 km to the east which took us from Italy into Austria.  We both like covered bridges and we had wanted to go see it yesterday but since the weather was questionable, we didn't want to push our luck.

Once we had seen the beautiful craftsmanship of the bridge we headed back to where we started in Dobbiaco, where we had some lunch before heading south on our planned tour route to Cortina D'Ampezza.

The Drauradweg trail down to the covered bridge was very pretty, but the path to Cortina was stunning.

After lunch, we climbed steadily up for 18 km on a very heavy rental tandem.  We topped out at 5049 feet above sea level before heading back down to Cortina.   On the way to Cortina, beautiful lakes, the Dolomite Mountains, and green mountain pastures greeted us at every turn.

Upon arrival into our destinstion of Cortina, we had wonderful pizza at La Ponte, right beside  our Hotel Villa Neve.  After dinner, we asked the owner where we could get good gelato, but he said "good gelato in Cortina, no".  So glad we didn't go chase down gelato only to be disappointed.  Now off to bed.

Riding route for today here.

Pictures below.   The Dolomites continue tomorrow...

John saves the day

The Punbrugge Bridge in Heinfels, Austria

Outstanding craftmanship on the inside of the bridge

View from the path in Austria

The path to Cortina D'Ampezza

Long ago, the path used to be the Dolomite Railwood.  Switch keeper's house.

Old train tunnel on the path to Cortina

Coming into Cortina

Almost to Cortina