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

Day 3 - Bruneca - Dobbiacho

Link to video

Today we took a van transport from Bolzano to Bruneco.  We enjoyed the leisure of a 32km day from Brunico to Dobbiaco. We had bad storms last night and a forecast for today that wasn't much better but we got lucky and the worst we got was a few sprinkles with occasional sunny skies. The temperature was around 60 degrees F.

The path scenery was spectacular with forest, mountain and lake views.  We stopped often to take pictures and ate lunch by the lake,  arriving at our hotel around 3:30.  Alexander, our host at the beautiful Hotel Rosengarten, made wonderful coffees to welcome us.  Sue drank hers and John's!

We made reservations for dinner at the hotel that included authentic local Tyrolean fare and entertainment.  The food was excellent.   The Tyrol musician was joined by Alexander (the owner) and some of the audience.   John joined the band first and the other diners followed.

Riding route for today here.

At the start of our 6 day tour with our Pedal Power Deep Tandem 

Old style wooden covered bridge for the path

Two back to back tunnels early in the ride this morning.  The first tunnel was 200 meters long and the second tunnel was 220 meters long

Lunch with a scenic view of a large lake

Sue showcasing our trusty steed in front of one of the many paintings that dotted the path along the lake, donated by local rectories

Some of the bike path today was a fine crushed gravel much like the Great Allegheny Passage we rode at this same time last summer

One of the many beautiful views of the Dolomite Mountains that we saw today

Houses in the area were either typical alpine style or like this one adorned with all kinds of exterior paintings

Two weeks ago while riding on Bike Ride Across Georgia I stood at the edge of a field of corn that was a little higher than an arm length above my head

Another mountain view as we continued our day long uphill climb

Sue with some Ritter Sport dark chocolate with hazelnuts from Spar grocery

Late afternoon view from our hotel in Dobbiaco

Tyrol musician, John

Day 2 - Bolzano - Funico Renon and Frozen Fritz

Dolomite Mountains from the cable car

Today we had breakfast in the lovely hotel garden, then tried to make a plan for the day around the weather forecast.  We headed dowtown through the drizzle, hoping for some sun later in the day.

Sure enough,  the sun popped out and we reversed plans and went to Funico Renon, the cablecar to Oberbozen.  The views were fantastic.  Once at the top, we saw a map with walking and hiking trails and selected a path through the woods with the chance for a cool forest picnic.  It was scenic and  even had benches and picnic areas.

The sun got brighter and the ride back down was even clearer.   John's camera captured the views as quickly as it could take pictures.

Once back,  we went to the Museum of Archaeology to see Otzi the iceman (known as Frozen Fritz here).

The exhibit exceeded all expectations, even including a great song from "Frozen Fritz, The Musical" and new developments from continuing research.   Oldest mummy ever found checked off our bucket list. 

After the best dark chocolate gelato we have ever eaten at Fredi, we came back to the hotel for our briefing from Girolibero, the bike tour company contracted  through Bike Tours Direct in Chattanooga TN.

We will name and ride the rental tandem, now John-equipped with our pedals and  seats, tomorrow to Dobbiacho.

After the bike orientation we had some incredible pizza at Al Cavaliere zum Ritter  Restaurante Pizzeria and then back to our hotel, Hotel Scala Steigl.  We would highly recommend this very nice hotel and it's caring staff.

Cable car

Vineyards on the hill overlooking Bolzano

Bench on the walking trails where we ate lunch

City of Bolzano from cable car

Unique pyramid rock formations formed by the glaciers

Otzi mummy

Life size recreation of Otzi

Locals call Otzi Frozen Fritz

Special museum built just for Otzi