I don’t think I mentioned our head waiter at dinner last night, he was quite a character with a very superior manner but perfectly correct and polite. This morning he greeted us by name at breakfast and directed us to our table with a flourish before snapping his fingers and whistling up coffees and beautifully fried eggs for us. We were amused that he assumed that we’d have eggs and bacon for breakfast when it wasn’t automatically offered to the Germans or the Italians – we assumed he had us pinned as Amercans or English and thus fried egg people 🙁 as we left the restaurant he shook our hands and wished us a fine journey, in the grand style!
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| Snow at the top of the Stelvio Pass |
The first major event for the day was the mind boggling drive up and over the. Stelvio pass. If you’re a Top Gear fan you may be familiar with this road from the show, as the boys had voted it one of the best roads to drive in Europe. The drive up was a taste of the rest to come, as we passed and were passed by, a succession of people who were keen to drive the road. They came in Porsches, BMW M3s, Lamborghinis, motorcycles, campervans and even (crazy!!) on push bikes. At the top we had climbed so high we were into the (melting) snow and stopped to take photos and to buy Neil a souvenir cap.
Then I held my breath as we set of down the 47 hairpin bends to the bottom of the pass. Neil was in heaven but I was petrified! The turns are so sharp that he needed to swing wide to get Round but we hd no way of knowing what was coming up from below. I told Neil to enjoy it because I’d never be driving it again!
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| Neil looking forward to the drive down! |
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| He’s keen! |
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| Enjoying the drive |
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| Pretty Glurns |
From the bends we continued down into the pretty green valley, ringed by high peaks and stopped for lunch in the tiny town of Glurns, it’s another one of those miniature walled European cities. This area is in Italy but in name only, the architecture is pure Austrian, and the street names, shop and restaurant names are all good German names. The passers by in the street were all speaking German too. We were delighted to find a stall selling one of our favourite quick lunches from our previous trip to Germany, and we tucked into tasty Bratwurst on a roll with curry sauce and Pomme frittes, yum!!
The rest of our afternoon was dominated by apples! The entire area is wall to wall apple orchards, the valleys between the high peaks are filled with grove after grove of young trees which were absolutely loaded with ripe fruit. It’s harvest time and our journey was considerably slowed by the many tractors and trucks transporting the apples from the groves to the processing centers. I had purchased a few fresh apples from the stall at lunch and we munched a couple as we drove along, they were just so crunchy and fresh.
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| Apple trees. |
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| Apples and Castles |
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| More castles! |
As we approached Bolzano we also passed a succession of tiny, old castles perched on the peaks above the road. Many of them looked derelict but some are open to visit, a standing record of the areas long medieval past. We stopped briefly in Bolzano, after a disastrous navigation disagreement between my expectations and the GPS instructions had us turning into a bicycle path! We walked a little way through the old town but decided not to visit the archaeology museum as the afternoon was getting away and the place was being mobbed by a huge crowd of small school children.
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| Street market in Bolzano |
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| Quaint Castelrotto |
Instead, we set off toward our home for the night, the little town of Castelrotto which is another quaint Austrian style village perched on a hill at the base of the Dolomites. Our room here is pure Tyrolean cuteness and we have a fabulous view up to the craggy grey peaks from our verandah. We wandered the town to see its sights and braved a Farmacia to see if I could get some extra cold medication (my head is still very stuffed up) I’d practiced my “Ho un raffredore e congestioni nasale” but luckily the pharmacists spoke perfect English! Phew!
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| Such a cute room! |
