Switzerland and Italy

Switzerland and Italy (July 26-August 10, 2008)

Saturday, July 26

After being up late Friday night finishing our packing, Roanne and I flew out of Salt Lake City at 9:50am on Saturday morning, transferred in Atlanta and then continued on to Zurich.

Sunday, July 27

We arrived in Zurich at 8:00am, took the train from the airport to the city center, and then walked to our accommodations at Hotel Martahaus which was conveniently located a few blocks from the train station. We were pretty tired from the overnight flight with not much sleep, so we checked into our room and then slept for 2 hours before waking up at 1:00pm to go and explore the city. I had read about the free rental bikes that are available in Zurich, so we headed to one of the stations and tried to check one out, but they were all gone. Sad and dejected, we settled for exploring the city on foot. We headed south along the river towards Lake Zurich, here is Roanne stopping to eat a banana on the nice cobblestone streets:

Notice the square swiss flags on the buildings in the background. One thing we noticed was that the streets were very clean (with the exception of the cigarette butts showing in the above picture), and we even saw several street sweepers out while we were walking. We stopped at a church called the Fraumunster, shown in the photo below, which is famous for it's stain glass windows. These were moderately interesting.

From there we continued south along the waterfront, stopping for some ice cream, and seeing various sculptures and a museum dedicated to Le Corbusier (a famous architect). By this time our lack of sleep was catching up with us, so we turned around and walked back to our hotel along the opposite bank of the river. Here is a shot looking up the river, note all the nice church spires:

The river water was a nice blueish green colour, and apparently it is clean enough to drink, although we did not put this claim to the test. Zurich seemed like a really nice city, with green forested hills rising immediately up from the edge of the city on all sides, it looked like it would have some nice road riding around it. We returned to our hotel and hit the sack at around 8:00pm, for some much needed rest.

Monday, July 28

We woke up early, had some breakfast, and then headed over to the train station to catch the 9:32am train to Grindelwald. Zurich was a nice city, but it was time to head for Eiger country! The train ride was fun, we had nice seats and the scenery was amazing. The Swiss countryside is so green, with immaculately maintained little wooden houses. One interesting thing about the houses was that most of them had roofs with slate (or some type of flat stone) instead of shingles. Here is a photo of Roanne either (a) watching the beautiful countryside whiz by (maybe), or (b) sleeping (more likely):

Upon arriving in Grindelwald we checked into our hotel (Hotel Residence), which was about a 12 minute walk from the train station. Grindelwald was a nice looking little town, lots of flowers as shown below (the Swiss love their balcony flowers):

We then grabbed some quick lunch at a cafe, with myself having a long sausage and Roanne having a super expensive 18 Franc salad. Switzerland is really expensive, we saw Crocs that were on sale for 70 Francs (about 70 USD), in U S and A they would probably cost $30. From the restaurant place mat (with a labeled view of the surrounding mountains) we were able to confirm our first sighting of the famous Eiger! If you have never heard of the Eiger then you better go study up on your mountaineering history, I don't have the time or space to get into it here. Let's just say the Eiger is kind of a big deal around here. We then decided that some sort of a hike was in order, so we headed for a cable car called Pfingstegg that would take us up into the mountains. Somehow on the way there I managed to convince Roanne that we should walk up instead of taking the cable car, so off we went up the hill. Here is a picture of Roanne on the way up, with Grindelwald in the background:

Part way up it started to rain really hard, so we took a break under some relative shelter in the woods, and luckily the storm only lasted about 15 minutes and we then continued on our merry way. The hike went up and then back into a glacier carved canyon and then back towards the Unterer Grindelwaldgletschen. That last word might mean "glacier". There were some nice views along the way, here is one of a long waterfall, and one of a swiss flag with the glacier in the background:

Here is a photo of Roanne paused on the way up (with Grindelwald in the background), and one of me with the glacier and the Finsteraarhorn in the background:

After hiking for a while, we reached a little restaurant/hotel called the Stieregg perched up on the hill with an amazing view. That was one interesting thing about Switzerland, they have hotels and restaurants in the most remote places. It is sort of nice, because it means that as a climber you could stop for a beer (or chocolate milk) on the way back down from your climb (as we saw several do while we were stopped there). But then other times you wish they weren't there, because just when you think you are really getting out into the wild, you happen upon a bed and breakfast. Here is a photo of the restaurant (what a view from the patio!):

One funny thing was that the restaurant seemed to be a new construction, which was strange since most of the other ones were really old. From some photos inside and our limited knowledge of German, we were able to deduce that the previous incarnation of the restaurant had been built too close to the edge of the cliff, and as the hillside eroded it actually slid off (hopefully no one was in it at the time). Sure enough, from the patio of this restaurant we could look down and see half of the foundation of the old one (the other half had disappeared over the cliff):

So that was funny. The trail we had been hiking up on was painted with red and white markings, meaning that it was a "mountain walk", or bergweg if you're a local. However, just past the Stieregg, the trail markings turned to blue and white, which meant that it was a more difficult alpine trail. I couldn't believe that we had been wasting our time on a simple bergweg, and I wanted desperately to continue further on the advanced blue and white trail, but for some reason Roanne was adamant about wanted to get down before dark. As a compromise, I obtained permission to run partway down the trail to take a look at a little mountain hut surrounded by boulders that we could see. Try to find me in the "where's waldo" picture below (hint look for an orange spot near a blue arrow):

We bought some chocolate at the Stieregg (a Swiss brand called Ovalmatine, very nice!), and then continued back down towards Grindelwald. On the way we observed the endless possibilities for limestone sport climbing on the hill side:

And we had a nice view of Grindelwald in the evening light (below). The Swiss country side is so green and lush, which I guess is probably because it rains every day (at least it did every day that we were there).

On the way back to our hotel we passed a nicely maintain grave yard, those Swiss sure love their flowers:

It was kind of late by the time that we tried to get some dinner, and we ate at a place called the C&M Cafe where Rosie had some seasonal ravioli and I had a very hard and decidedly sub par chicken curry sandwich. We then returned to our hotel and fell into bed at 10:30pm.

Tuesday, July 29

We awoke at 7:30am to get an early start for the Eiger Super Hike that I had planned for us, one that would take us below the Eiger Nordwand. Unfortunately, it was pouring rain, putting the kibosh on those plans. We had a long breakfast, and then went back to our room and mulled over our options. Fortunately, it stopped raining at 9:30am, so we decided to scale back our plans and instead of doing a long hike, go do a Via Ferrata (or in Swiss German, a Klettersteig) route on a formation called the Schwarzhorn. Via Ferrata means "Iron Road" in Italian, and as you might have guessed it is something that originated in Italy. During the first world war, the Italian army bolted steel cables up a bunch of mountains in the Dolomites to allow their soldiers to train safely (or at least more safely) in the mountains. In recent years these steel cables have been refurbished, and it has become popular for outdoor enthusiasts to use these routes. All you need is a harness, some slings, and some locking carabiners. You can scramble up the mountain while being clipped in to the steel cable, so that if you fell you wouldn't go too far (only to the last place that the cable had been secured to the mountain side). The popularity of via ferrata in Italy means that it has spread to other countries, and there were 3 via ferrata routes near Grindelwald. Our chosen route up the Schwarzhorn is shown in red on the photo below (as seen from across the valley on our hike the previous day). The via ferrata part of it started when the route reached the skyline, and continued along the ridge with awesome exposure and great views.

We started by taking a cable car up to a station called "First". This saved a lot of elevation gain and distance, making our ascent much more manageable. At the cable car station we were introduced to a hot new trend called "Trotti biking". This means you take the cable car up, then ride a weird bike with no pedals down the road. It didn't sound too appealing to me, but according to the signs we saw it was the hot new thing in Switzerland. I composed a number of short songs about Trotti Biking, and sang them during the cable car ride until Roanne's patience grew thin and I was not allowed to say "Trotti Bike" for the rest of the trip, unless it was in a situation that made sense. For example, if I saw someone trotti biking, I could say "Look at that trotti biker!". But I could not just start spontaneously singing about trotti bikes during our hike when there were no trotti bikes in sight. Here is a photo of Rosie on the cable car ride up to First:

By the time we reached First the sky had totally cleared and it was a beautiful sunny day. We started on a red/white trail (boring!), and headed towards the Schwarzhorn. The trails in Grindelwald (and everywhere we went in Switzerland) were incredibly well sign posted, it would be almost impossible to get lost. Here are some shots of Rosie on the hike towards the Schwarzhorn, notice how green everything is, and also in the first photo, notice the Eiger (!!!) on the right side of the photo:

On this part of the hike we had our first swiss cow sighting, and more importantly we heard their cow bells tinkling in the distance. Eventually we split off the red/white trail onto a blue/white alpine trail and approached the ridgeline where the via ferrata started. Here is a shot of Rosie with the coveted blue/white trail marking visible:

We ascended some third class rock with some steel ladder rungs bolted to it, and gained the ridge where we donned our harnessed and clipped in to the steel cables:

We traversed the ridge, ascending two completely vertical sections that had ladders bolted to them:

That put us on a knife edge ridge with awesome exposure and incredible views:

Finally we reached the top of the Schwarzhorn, where we met a nice Brit who had come up the hiking route (that we would descend) and agreed to take our photo:

Here is a panorama shot that I took from the Schwarzhorn summit. Note the mountains in every direction; that is what makes Switzerland so awesome (and why my lovely wife and I plan on moving there as soon as the opportunity presents itself), mountains everywhere you turn!

We then continued down the hiking route and rejoined the trail leading back to First. Here is a shot of me on the way down, with the Eiger highlighted by a blue arrow:

We were pretty hungry by the time we reached First, so we decided to have a late lunch at the restaurant there. After some debate we settled on Rosti, which is sort of like thin hashbrowns, and is very very good. We ate outside on the patio and watched paragliders cruising around the nearby thermals. We then took the cable car back down to Grindelwald. Since there it was only around 3:00pm by this time and Roanne had some work to finish off, I looked into renting a mountain bike for the rest of the day but unfortunately they only had size medium (way too small for a tall drink of water like myself). Instead, we decided to play minigolf, and despite Roanne's golden golf credentials I ended up thumping her by 6 strokes. As we were playing it looked like a storm was moving in, and just as we finished it started to rain. We ran back to our hotel room, and by the time we got there it was raining super hard. Here is a view of it out our window:

Roanne started doing her work and I twiddled my thumbs, and miraculously after only about 10 minutes the rain stopped and it got sunny again. I decided to go for a run, and I headed up the valley, then up to a glacier called the Oberer Grindelwaldgletscher. From there I headed along the hill side to Pfinstegg (where we had hiked the previous day) and back down to our hotel room. By this time Rosie had finished her work, and we went and had some dinner at a nice pizza place (we were sick of sausage already, which seems to be a swiss staple) before turning in at 11:00pm.

Wednesday, July 30

We awoke at 7:30am to sunny skies, perfect weather for our planned expedition up to Jungfraujoch, the highest train station in Europe at 11,400 feet. Actually it wasn't much of an expedition, as we would be taking the train there along with thousands of other tourists. But on the way we planned to stop at the Eigergletscher train station at the base of the Eiger and do a via ferrat (or more properly, since we were in Switzerland, a klettersteig) on a formation called the Rotstock which is on the shoulder of the Eiger. We boarded the train in Grindelwald, and headed up to Kleine Scheidegg, which is famous in mountaineering lore as being the base where potential suitors would launch their assaults on the Eiger Nordwand (northface). The town is just a small clustering of hotels, that have telescopes where people would track the climbers progress up the northface, witnessing many fatal falls before the face was finally conquered in 1938 by a German-Austrian team. Here is the view out the window on the train to Kleine Scheidegg, with the Eiger Nordwand looming in the background above the green fields:

The train ascends a very steep grade, and is a cogwheel train since normal trains can't climb grades more than a few percent. After changing trains in Kleine Scheidegg, we disembarked again at the Eigergletscher stop and hiked along the Eiger trail to reach the base of the north face. Here is a shot of Roanne geared up and ready for some extreme klettersteig:

At the base of the northface there was a sign commemorating the first ascent and pointing out the route. It was fun to look at this and pick out all of the famous landmarks along the route, such as the hinterstoisser traverse, the white spider, the death bivouac and the traverse of the gods, as well as the windows from the train tunnel out onto the north face from which rescues were conducted. Here is a shot of the sign with the north face in the background:

After drinking in our fill of visual mountaineering history, we headed up for the Rotstock formation, which juts out from the north face of the Eiger. Here is a shot of Roanne hiking up to it, with the Eiger to the left of the small saddle at the top of the photo and the Rotstock (which we would be ascending) to the right:

From the base of the route we were able to pick out where it went by two climbers dressed in bright orange high on the route. We started climbing, and after a while we reached the two "climbers", who turned out to be construction workers who were doing something on one of the tunnels that connected from outside the mountain into the tunnel that the train passed through. Switzerland is so awesome, imagine being a construction worker and part of your job is to climb the stinkin' Eiger! I can't wait to move to Switzerland. Here are two shots from the Klettersteig Rotstock, on the left the Eigergletscher train station where we started is visible at the end of the ridge, and on the right Kleine Scheidegg can be seen in the background above and to the left of Roanne:

After an uneventful ascent we reached the top of the Rotstock, from where we had a good view of the Monch, one of the famous three mountains in the vicinity of Grindelwald (the Eiger, the Monch, and the Jungfrau):

Here are some shots from the top, the first looking back at summit to Roanne perched on top near the obligatory summit cross, and the second looking past some prayer flags back down towards Grindelwald:

We then descended back down to the Eigergletscher train station, and waited a few minutes to board the train that would take us the rest of the way up to the Jungfraujoch station:

As the train pulled up I was explaining to Roanne how the most exciting part of the train ride was about to begin, but it turned out that the rest of the 3800 feet of ascent would take place inside a dark tunnel bored through the heart of the Eiger. The train stopped a few times where we could look out windows out the north face. It was a pretty impressive tunnel (not to look at, but to think about), it was completed in 1912, and over 500,000 tourists pass through it annually to visit the top station of Jungfraujoch. At almost $200 fare per passenger for a roundtrip from Interlaken, this adds up to a lot of income for the Jungfrau Railway company! I wish someone had drilled me a tunnel through a mountain a hundred years ago. Anyway, we reached the Jungfraujoch and were greeted by pretty good views and throngs of people. We fought our way through the crowds out onto the glacier (photo below), and were greeted by the standard recreational opportunities you would expect to find on a glacier: golf, dog sledding, and zip lining. I might have guessed that the natural splendour of the glacier would be enough of an attraction in itself, but it turns out that glaciers are boring for the general population unless they are accompanied by golfing opportunities. Here is a shot of the glacier:

Back in the train station, we checked out the observation deck that had great views of the Jungfrau and the Monch. At this point some weather moved in and it started to snow briefly, pretty different than the conditions we had woken up to back down in Grindelwald! Here is a picture that friendly American took of us with the Jungfrau in the background:

After all of the amazing mountain scenery that we had seen in solitude on our hikes and scrambles in Grindelwald, the crowded carnival atmosphere of the Jungfraujoch made us feel a bit nauseous, so decided to head back down to the valley. After recovering our luggage from our hotel, we boarded the train for our next destination in Switzerland: Zermatt, where we had a rendezvous with the Matterhorn! It rained hard on the train ride but then cleared up, here are two shots from the train, one out the window to give you and idea of the scenery, and the second back into the train to give you an idea of how excited we both were to be observing said scenery:

In Zermatt we walked across town and checked into our hotel, Hotel Coeur des Alpes, a fancy boutique hotel run by a super nice french couple. It was voted most romantic hotel in Europe according to some website, and it was the most amazing hotel I have ever stayed in. I would have been more than content to have stayed there for the rest of our 2 week trip. Here is a view of the bathroom, c'est moderne!

Zermatt reminded me a lot of Whistler, it had more of a young ski town vibe to it than Grindelwald did. We went for dinner at a pub called The Brown Cow, where we were served by a bartender who looked suspiciously like Cadel Evans. We theorized that maybe this was Cadel's new gig after losing his position at Silence-Lotto for choking in the final Tour time trial? In any case, Cadel served us some good hamburgers and Guiness (and did well to mask his Aussie accent with a thick Swiss German accent). As we were leaving I winked at him and told him that his true identity was safe with us. He looked mystified, but I knew that he secretly understood. While we were eating dinner it had started to rain very hard (it seems that at some point during every day in Switzerland it ends up raining very hard), and we played James Bond as we ran along the cobble stone streets back to our hotel, pausing for shelter under roofs and awnings whenever possible. Back at the most romantic hotel in Europe there were some heart shaped chocolates on our pillows which we promptly devoured and then drifted off to sleep just before midnight.

Thursday, July 31

We woke up at 7:40am, had a really good breakfast in our romantic hotel, and then walked into the town to find out about some good hikes we could do. As we stepped out of our hotel we were immediately confronted with an awesome view of the venerable Matterhorn, with clouds streaming off the summit:

During our inquiries we caught wind of a via ferrata in the area, and since we had had so much fun doing this in Grindelwald, we asked for some directions and the Alpin Center. With directions in hand, we went back to the hotel and suited up for an all day adenture that would start with the via ferrata that would deposit us up on a hill side where we could pick up a trail and continue hiking. While walking through the town to access the trailhead we spied a sign that made us pretty excited, the REAL swiss chalet!!!

We resisted the urge to immediately head in and order a quarter chicken dinner with fries and extra sauce, and before long we were at the base of the via ferrata. We headed up and it proved to be really fun, with some good exposed sections heading up vertical to slightly overhanging ladders:

There were also a bunch of nice exposed traverses along the amazing streaked limestone, all the while with striking mountain scenery in the background:

There was also an interesting cable ladder that we ascended that looked like it had been stolen from a playground and installed on the cliff:

The Zermatt via ferrata definitely had more of a jungle gym flavour to it then the ones we had done in Grindelwald, bit it was fun nonetheless. We reached the top of the route at around 1:00pm, where we were deposited onto one of the hiking trails which we could have taken back into the valley or on up further into the mountains surrounding Zermatt. Naturally, we pursued the latter option. Here is a picture of Roanne in the meadow at the top of the via ferrata, with the omnipresent Matterhorn looming in the background, and on the right there is the view down into Zermatt. Zermatt is quite a compact little town, but apparently it can accommodate upwards of 14,000 visitors in it's many hotels during the winter ski season. I would stinkin' love to come skiing here, actually I would love to move here.

From here we continued on the hiking trail, and heading west we made our way to a little hotel and restaurant nestled in the hills called Trift. This was in a really beautiful setting, and it was fun to hang out here for a bit, as it was bustling with alpine climbers either heading up or coming back down from their ascents higher up in the mountains. Here is a shot of the nice pink Hotel Trift:

We also stopped to do some foot repair here, as Roanne was getting a blister on her heel that required an elaborate tape application, and I had some toes that were rubbing and required an application of my newly acquired swiss bandands, bright red with the white cross symbol on them, the best bandaids I have ever seen. From Trift we continued on, climbing up the hillside and traversing around for a full view of the Matterhorn (note the sheep in the background), with a close-up of the shaggy mountain sheep (or whatever they were) on the right:

Here is a nice panorama view that I took from one trail intersection that we arrived at. The scenery was amazing, nice green hills in the foreground (with occasional sheep clinking their bells) and high snow capped mountains in the background:

We continued along this trail which dropped steeply to one side, here is a shot of Roanne making her merry way along the trail:

The trail then dropped into a valley below, and on the way down we passed a really nice waterfall that we each took time to pose in front of:

As we reached the valley there seemed to be some power generating facilities there, and we saw a bunch of machinery stacked outside (photo below). We were not sure what these things were, if anyone reads this and knows, please e-mail me to enlighten me.

At this point we were still a fair distance from Zermatt, though it would have been a relatively easy walk down the flat valley back into the town. Somehow I managed to convince Roanne that it was a better idea to ascend the hillside opposite to the one we had just come down from, since there was a gondola station called "Schwarzee Paradise" at the top, and the gondola would probably be running and we could then ride that right back down into town. The only sticking point with this plan was the little 'probably' that preceded the relaxing ride down into town on the cable car. Nevertheless, Roanne signed off on this plan and we headed up towards the gondola station. As we neared the top we saw some dark clouds moving in, so we sped up until we reached the hotel/restaurant at the gondola station just as it was starting to rain really hard. We ducked inside to inquire about the gondola, which unfortunately had stopped running at 4:30pm (it was now 7:00pm). This led to some tense negotiations, and our till-now iron clad team unity began to show some signs of cracking (read: I was in a lot of trouble). We waited out the worst of the rain, and then headed down towards Zermatt on one of the hiking trails. As we descended the rain abated and we were treated to some really nice rainbows over the valley:

On the way down we stopped at another cable car station at Furi to see if it might be running, but this one had also stopped for the day. So we continued our trek back into town, passing some nice older houses along the way:

We arrived back at the hotel just before 8:30pm, for the conclusion of a long 10 hour day of adventure. We thought about going to get some dinner, but there was a note in our room from the hotel proprietors about a BBQ they were having that evening for the hotel guests, with the welcoming message "Join us for our funny evening!". We thought they probably meant "fun evening", but either way sounded good to us, so we headed down to join the BBQ. All the other guests were just finishing their dinners (they must have decided to end their daily activities on the early side), but we sat down next to a nice couple from Belgium and had a great time chatting with them. The man was a big cycling fan (even though he didn't ride himself), and we spent a while discussing Boonen, belgium cycling, and le Tour. It was pretty neat to talk to this guys, it drove home the difference between cycling in Belgium and North America: in North America the only people who care about professional cycling are people who are themselves amateur cyclists and participate themselves in the sport, while in Belgium cycling is like football and baseball are here, most of the fans don't actually do the sport themselves. Belgium cyclocross races will have 15,000 smoking, beer-swilling, frite-eating fans who each paid 15 euros to line the muddy course to scream at and try to dump beer on the passing riders, while at North American cyclocross races the only spectators for the pro races are the amateur riders who raced earlier in the day. This brings to light the obvious question: why wasn't I born in Belgium? Oh well, no sense crying over spilt milk. The Belgians recommended Brugge as a nice city in Belgium to visit, and observed that Belgian chocolate is far superior to Swiss chocolate (so much so that they had brought their own supply of Belgian chocolate with them on their trip, as they couldn't bear to choke down any swiss chocolate and going a day without chocolate is out of the question). We closed out the "funny evening" at 11:30pm, said Tchuss to our gracious hosts, and then headed up to our room for some well-earned sleep.

Friday, August 1

After a good night's sleep, we woke at 7:50am and went down for breakfast, where our host informed us that it was the Swiss national holiday. Everyone seemed festive, and there were even special buns on the breakfast tables with the Swiss cross baked onto them and little Swiss flag toothpicks stuck into them. Before learning of the national holiday I had been tempted to eat one of said buns, but upon being informed of their meaning by our hostess I was happy that I hadn't, as this might have been in poor form. We had originally planned to depart from Zermatt this morning for Cinque Terre in Italy, but partly because of the festivities promised by the national holiday (fireworks, music, etc.) and partly because I was head over heels in love with Zermatt, we decided to bail on Cinque Terre and stay another day in Zermatt. Our hotel was fully booked for the night, so we had to transfer hotels and we were sorry to leave the most romantic hotel in Europe behind. Our new hotel, Hotel Weisshorn was very nice although not nearly as fancy. Since I had seen a bunch of people with mountain bikes and the trails around Zermatt seemed like they would be super fun, I went and inquired about mountain bikes and rented a nice hardtail Wheeler mountain bike for each of Roanne and myself. We set off on some trails from Zermatt, but pretty soon we found ourselves faced with some stiff uphills, and we realized that we were not of one mind concerning Swiss mtb adventures: I considered technical uphill riding to be fun and challenging, while Rosie considered pushing her bike up a hill to be abnormal and daft. We made a short loop back into the village, and decided that in light of our divergent philosophies it might be best to split up for the day: I could pursue extreme mountain bike adventures, and Roanne could spend some time walking around town and take one of the cog wheel trains or gondolas up to some of the glaciers and lakes.

I had seen some signs talking about how some downhill mtb race was going to be held in the coming weeks at Gornergrat, which is in the hills above Zermatt, so I thought it might be prudent to head up there and check into it. Gornergrat is about 4500 feet of elevation higher than Zermatt, but luckily you can take a cogwheel train up, and it is normal for downhillers to take their bikes up on the train and then ride down (Switzerland is so awesome!). I noticed that some clouds seemed to be rolling in, but despite this I boarded the train at 2:00pm and headed up to Gornergrat, which boasts the highest hotel in Europe, at 10,200 feet. As I rode up, the clouds continued to roll in and by the time I disembarked at Gornergrat at around 2:40 it was totally dark and raining pretty hard. The neon display at the top station displayed the temperature as a frigid 6 degrees Celsius, which was disheartening since all I was wearing was some running short, and a thin synthetic longsleeve over a synthetic tanktop. Chilly! I dashed from the train station to the hotel, which on one level had a mini shopping mall. I decided to wait it out and see if it warmed up and stopped raining, since hypothermia resulting from descending 4,500 feet on a mountain bike in the freezing rain didn't sound too appealing. As I feigned interest in the Swiss army knives and watches on display in the shops, the thunder and lightning started and the rain increased with some hail thrown in for good measure. Stinker! I waited as long as I could without much change, and finally at 3:24pm I decided I had to suck it up and go for it. I went into a shop at the train station and purchased matching Switzerland fleece gloves and a hat, so at least I would be able to operate my brakes with my hands and my ears wouldn't fall off. Just as I came out of the shop to head down, and was contemplating that I didn't know exactly which trail to take down, a group of about 9 mountain bikers disembarked from the train and headed down one of the slimy trails with whoops of delight. They looked like they knew where they were going, so I took off after them down the mountain. The riding was super fun, technical and rocky. The back part of the group consisted of a bunch of ladies, and I passed them and caught up with the front guys who had stopped to wait. I talked to them for a bit as they waited, they turned out to be a mix of Americans and Canadians, one guy from Calgary and one guy from Nelson and I can't remember where the Americano was from. They were all on nice long travel downhill bikes and seemed like they had been in Zermatt for a while as they knew the trails pretty well. They admired my hardtail rental with the cable lock wrapped around the seatpost, perfect equipment for these hairy swiss downhills... naaaahhhht (to be said like Borat). They gave me some good trail recommendations, and I headed off while they stayed to wait for les femmes.

I continued down on the super fun trails, and as the rain slowly started to abate and it warmed up, my original plan of bombing straight down to Zermatt in survival mode was quickly amended to a rising traverse of the hill side that would take in as much of the amazing single track as possible. I headed across the hill side above the tree line, and soon found myself on a long climb up towards another station called Rothorn Paradise, which was at about 10,300 feet of elevation. The climb was pretty hard and steep and in numerous places I had to get off and push my bike (all the while thinking that it was lucky Roanne had accompanied me on this particular adventure). As I rode/walked I was keeping an eye on the time, since the rental bike had to be back by the time the shop closed at 7:00pm. I was torn between turning around and heading all the way up to the Rothorn station, but it always seemed so close, and my time calculations indicated that I should be able to make it down in time providing I didn't get lost or anything. Finally I made it up to the top, and promptly headed down. I made a poor decision of which route to take, and soon found myself headed away from Zermatt on some super technical rocky single track. At this point if I had gone back up to try another way down I would have been late for sure, so I persevered and luckily the trail eventually looped back in the right direction. By this time I was in full Sven Nys mode, going as fast as I could and running with my bike over my shoulder on the sections that were too sketchy to ride. Another kick in the pants was that the weather was once again deteriorating, and the town of Zermatt below was now completely enshrouded in mist with some light rain falling. As you read this you might be feeling sorry for me, but it was actually super fun, in the same way that a cyclocross race in the rain and mud is fun. Maybe it is just rosy retrospection, but looking back, the memorable moments always seem to be the ones where you are under some sort of duress and there is uncertainty about the final outcome. Fortunately I made good/lucky route-finding choices for the rest of the way down, and rolled into the shop just before the 7:00am closing time. I walked back to the hotel where Rosie was reading her book, she had spent most of the afternoon around town since the bad weather made a trip up to a glacier at 10,000 feet less appealing.

We showered and then headed out to find some dinner on our last night in Switzerland (boooooo!). We settled on a cosy log fondue restaurant called Ross-Stall. The dinner was amazing, our best one in Switzerland. We each had a Swiss beer and Rosie had tomato-cheese fondue while I had bacon-onion fondue. Very good! After dinner we headed back out into the rain and went to the fairgrounds to partake in the Swiss national day celebrations. In the streets by the fairground we were amused by a bunch of Swiss teenagers that kept lighting firecrackers and lobbing them into puddles, then looking surprised and disappointed when they didn't go off. Soon after we arrived at the fairgrounds a traditional band played the national anthem (which made me think warmly of Spartacus), and finally an impressive fireworks began. The fireworks were being set off up in the valley of Trift that we had hiked to the previous day, and despite the rain and the fog they looked pretty cool, lighting up the entire sky as the light diffused in the fog with silhouettes of trees and cliffs. Here are a couple of shots of the fireworks (unfortunately the only photos we took all day):

We then headed back to the hotel and took a while to fall asleep as it seemed that someone on the street outside our hotel was lighting off firecrackers every few minutes.

Saturday, August 2

We woke at 7:30am, had some breakfast, and then headed out the door for the train station. As we left our hotel we had an awesome view of the Matterhorn, it was the clearest day yet:

It was an indescribable tragedy to be leaving Zermatt on such an awesome day, but somehow we soldiered on towards the train station. We stopped off to buy some chocolate (despite the harsh criticisms of the Belgians, we both found Swiss chocolate to be quite palatable) and postcards before boarding the train to Venice at 9:39am. Since this was our longest train ride of the trip, we had elected to travel first class, fancy! The train ride through the mountains was nice, and my bitterness in leaving Zermatt was blunted by the fact that it started to rain (as it seemed to at some point during every day in Switzerland) as we rode down the valley from Zermatt. We had some lunch in the restaurant car, here is Rosie about to enjoy a lovely sandwich:

After a few transfers we finally arrived in Venice at 4:15pm. As we exited the train station and surveyed our situation we were immediately confronted by three hard facts: 1. the head and humidity was oppressive compared to the cool Swiss mountain air, 2. we were surrounded by throngs of tourists, and perhaps most notably, 3. there wasn't a mountain in sight. Stinker! Oh well, the canals looked pretty nice, so we wandered off down some of the alleyways to try and find our hotel. I had read warnings about getting lost in Venice if you didn't have directions to your hotel, but I had a map and confidently led Roanne through the streets towards our hotel. Except we couldn't quite find it, and after some heated debate it turned out that I had led us to the wrong side the Grand Canal (the major canal that snakes through Venice), and was mistakenly directing us to some random restaurant instead of our hotel. In my mind this was clearly the fault of the ambiguous guidebook, but my team mate didn't see things in that positive light. So we retraced our steps to the hotel, and this time with Roanne navigating (I was demoted from my position of navigator in chief for a the next few days) we found our hotel in short order, which was called the San Marcuola. Our room was really nice, with stone floors and a window out onto a quiet canal. This was satisfying, since it seemed that in all the hotels we had stayed previously it would have been possible to have rooms with awesome views of mountains but instead our room would face the wall of a barn or something slightly less scintillating. Rejoicing in our success at scoring a room with a view, we went out for a walk in the neighbourhood of Cannaregio for the rest of the evening. Here are some photos from the walk, the first (left) looking down a side canal onto the grand canal with a Vaporetto (water bus) passing by, and the second (right) along one of the walkways beside a quiet canal.

We stopped for dinner at a restaurant with some outdoor seating along the canal. The food was pretty good, we started with crab gnocchi, followed by calamari and venetian spaghetti with cuttlefish. The service was a bit sub par, and we had stinkin' smokers seated on both sides of us. Gross! We then headed back to our hotel to get some rest before the next day in which we planned to take in all of the Venice sights and attractions.

Sunday, August 3

We slept in until 9:30am, and had breakfast in the hotel. The breakfast was a bit mediocre, not as good as the Swiss breakfasts. We then walked to the Vaporetto (water bus) stop, and rode the boat all the way down the grand canal to the Piazza San Marco, where we planned to start our sightseeing. The canal ride was nice, lots of old wooden boats cruising around mixed in with the gondolas, as seen in this photo:

Upon arrival at the Piazza San Marco we joined the throngs of tourists walking around the Square and admiring the buildings. The focal point was the Basilica di San Marco, which is an opulent synthesis of Byzantine and Romanesque styles... etc. It was pretty nice looking, here is a picture of it:

The square itself was pretty nice looking, here is a view of that:

Another interesting building in the square was the Campanile, a tall brick bell tower that stood for 1,000 years before collapsing in 1902 and subsequently being rebuilt. One funny thing was that they had the area around the building blocked off so they could perform structural reinforcements. If they built the first version in 900 AD and it lasted for 1000 years, you would think that mark II, built in 1900 AD, could at least last 100 years without needing to be fixed up. I guess they don't build brick bell towers like they used to... Here is a shot of the bell tower with the Basilica di San Marco in the background:

We took an elevator up to the top of the bell tower (hoping that it wouldn't collapse while we were up there) and had some good views out over Venice, here is the view looking back down into the square and beyond:

After touring through some of the buildings and getting our fill of both the architectural wonders and the crowds, we decided to make our way back through Venice on foot, taking in the sights as we went. We walked along some nice quiet canals with brightly painted buildings:

We passed the Ponte del Accademia which apparently is a well known bridge in Venice. It is made of wood and was erected as a temporary measure until a more permanent structure could be put in place, but the Venetians liked it so much they just kept the temporary version. Here is a shot of the bridge:

On the way back we happened upon the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, which is a small collection of mostly modern art, including works by Picasso, Dali, Pollack, and others. We decided to take this opportunity to fulfill our art gallery duty for the trip (having already fulfilled our "old church duty" earlier in the day), so we toured through the collection which was actually fairly interesting (but not interesting enough to make me want to go into any other art galleries on the trip). The best work of art on display was one called "Au Velodrome" by Jean Metzinger, which portrayed the scene at the Roubaix velodrome at the end of the Paris-Roubaix (the queen of the classics). We continued to work our way back past various sights, here are some photos. On the left is a flotilla of gondolas, some of the boatsmen were singing for their passengers, and on the right is a view of the grand canal from the Vaporetto:

Here is another photo of the grand canal in some nice light:

And finally, one more of the grand canal:

We made it back to the hotel around 8:00pm, and dropped some stuff off before heading out for dinner at a small restaurant recommended by the book. This dinner was exponentially better than the night before, the wait staff was super nice, the food was amazing, and it felt much less touristy. Viva Italia! After the great dinner we headed back to hotel and hit the sack.

Monday, August 4

Having acquired the Italian taste for eating late and sleeping in, we rose at 9:00am, had some breakfast, and then headed to the grocery store to get some picnic supplies for our day of visiting the islands near Venice. We first headed to Murano, which is famous for its glass making facilities, which were moved here from Venice due to fear of burning down the city. It was a really nice island, a smaller version of Venice replete with canals and brightly painted houses, but less litter, fewer noisy tourists, and better maintained buildings. I took pleasure in noting that one of the glass making furnaces had been named after me:

Here are some shots of the well-maintained, brightly coloured buildings lining the canals:

We strolled along the canals and looked in the glass galleries, and ended up acquiring an interesting handmade vase. After getting our fill of glassware, we boarded the Vaporetto and continued on to our next stop, the island of Burano, which is famous for its lace making. Burano was smaller and quieter than Murano, with similar brightly coloured buildings and a leaning church tower that looked like it was about to fall over. Here is a shot of one the canals on Burano:

After walking around the island, Roanne went lace shopping while I ate gelato and learned how to count to 10 in Italian. I also browsed through a shop that sold balsamic vinegar (among other things), and they had one bottle that had been aged for over 100 years (bottled in 1896) and was priced at 680 euros. That would make for an expensive vinaigrette! During our wanderings Roanne noticed that at one point I blended in perfectly with the background buildings, see if you can pick me out in the picture below:

We then boarded the boat for our last island of the day, Torcello. Torcello is known mostly for its archealogical remains, as its once vibrant population of 50,000 (during the 1500s) is now down to 6. This was by far the quietest of the islands, and it was nice to stroll around before boarding the Vaporetto and heading back to Venice. Here is a shot of Cimitero San Michele, taken on the boat ride back. This is an island cemetery just offshore from Venice where several notable people are buried, including Igor Stravinsky.

After eating the remnants of our picnic for dinner, we spent some time walking around perusing the tourist shops. I had wanted to get a Team Italia warm up jacket, but it turns out that Italians have very short arms and I could not find one that fit. Roanne found some nice fabric stores to look at, here she is looking in the window of one:

After the sun set we decided it might be fun to ride the Vaporetto down the grand canal to see how it looks at night. We had great seats and had a really nice ride down the canal, and then walked back through the streets to our hotel. We made it back to our hotel around midnight, and packed our bags for our departure for the Dolomites the next morning.

Tuesday, August 5

We rose early at 7:50am to check out of our hotel and catch the 9:00am train that would take us north from Venice, to Bolzano (gateway to the Dolomites!). We had good window seats for the train ride, but the train encountered some delays (for which explanation was only provided in Italian, so we had no idea what was going on), and we arrived in Bolzano about 45 minutes late, at 1:15pm. The train ride was nice, lots of vineyards and through a valley with lots of limestone cliffs to both sides. We obtained directions at the train station and walked to our hotel, the Magdalenerhof, which was about 25 minutes from the train station (not quite the advertised 1 km!). After checking in, we headed back into town and talked to people in the information office, where we obtained directions to the local office of the Italian alpine club so that we could get some information on a good Via Ferrata route to do the next day. The town of Bolzano has a fleet of rental bikes (1 euro/6 hours, super cheap!!!) and lots of bike paths, so we picked up some bikes and set off to explore the town. After find the Italian Alpine Club with much difficulty, we talked to someone who was really helpful and got some Via Ferrata recommendations. The only sticking point was that he kept recommending easy and short ones, despite my repeated entreaties to point us towards the longest and most difficult ones. We then went to a book store to get the required maps, but they were all out of the one we needed. This turned out to be a good thing, as we sat down and looked through the guidebook ourselves and choose one that sounded really good (much more interesting than the one that had been recommended). The route we chose was described as "Monumental!", so we placed our bets on this word meaning the same in German as it does in English, and decided to try it out. We then arranged a car rental for the next day, as there were no trains connecting Bolzano with the locations deeper in the Dolomites where we wanted to go. This was one drawback of an Italian mountain vacation as opposed to a Swiss one, in Switzerland we could take trains everywhere we wanted to go, even the remote spots in the mountains, there was never any need for a car. With all of the logistics for the next day taken care of, we then set off on our cruiser bikes for a pedal around the Bolzano countryside. We had seen a brochure for an old castle on the outskirts of town that houses the Messner Mountain Museum, run by Reinhold Messner (mountaineering legend, if you have never heard of him you better go read some alpine history), so we decided to head for that. Here is a view back down into Bolzano on the way there, you can see the limestone peaks of the Dolomites looming in the background:

Here is a shot looking out in another direction, vineyard as far as the eye can see! The is certainly no shortage of winemaking facilities in Italy.

By the time we reached the museum it was closed, but it was still fun to check out the exterior of the castle that it is housed in, and we had some good views out over the surrounding countryside. Here are a couple of shots of the museum:

We then headed back into town, and had dinner at a really good restaurant called Batzenhausl. We had a really funny waiter, who recommended that we finish off with a "new trend drink" called the hugo (probably spelled wrong), which we did, and then headed back to our hotel. Unfortunately, it was quite hot still and there was no air conditioning in the hotel, so we left all the windows open. The problem with this was that outside our window there was some sort of heating/cooling equipment that was really loud and came on periodically throughout the night, so we didn't sleep too well.

Wednesday, August 6

We got up at 7:30am and had some really good breakfast before walking into town to pick up our rental car. The car was a small standard diesel Fiat, and after getting oriented with our map we headed for the dolomites. The tight and twisty mountain roads were super fun to drive on, and we saw lots of cyclists. I was drooling at the prospect of cycling on those roads with the crazy switchbacks up huge climbs, but we had decided to sample a real Italiano Via Ferrata, so on we went. One complaint I have about Europe is that the concept of a public restroom is totally foreign to them. We stopped at one point in a town and asked in the tourist information center if there was a public restroom anywhere, and the girl working there looked at us like we were crazy and said of course there wasn't. We ended up buying something in a cafe just to use their restroom, and then continued on our way. We drove for about 1.5 hours (slowed down by all of the traffic and going through busy resort towns), reaching the Marmolada and starting the approach to our route at around 11am. Here is a picture of Roanne on the verdant approach to the climb. In the background are some French climbers who were headed down from the base of the climb, which we initially found a bit confusing. After we reached the base of the climb we realized why, there was a party of about 8 slow moving Germans partway up the climb, the French climbers had probably retreated to avoid the risk of rockfall with a party ahead of them. To the right is a picture of the plaque at the base of the climb.

We decided to head up the climb despite the party ahead, hoping to pass them quickly and minimize our time in their fall line (especially since we had neglected to bring our helmets). So, up we headed. Here is a picture of Roanne just after getting started, and one of me higher up when we started getting into some mist:

After about 30 minutes we motored past the Germans, who gave a few grunts as we passed them (they didn't seem too friendly, but at least they didn't resist being passed), and we continued on up. Bolzano is in the part of Italy which has two official languages: German and Italian, and the culture there seems more German than Italian. At one point we gained a ridge where it flattened out a bit, here is a view of Roanne coming up to that point. Looking back down into the valley you can see the roads that I can't believe I didn't ride a bike on. I must be nuts!

Looking over the other side of the ridge we could see a large lake that we had driven by, as well as the ski lifts that ran up a low angle rock formation:

We continued up with amazing views, although one side of the ridge we were ascending was intermittently obscured by cloud. Here is a photo of Roanne emerging from out of the mist on the upper section of a long slab before we gained the summit ridge. This was super fun, it is a great feeling to just be heading up and not quite sure what it will be like when you get there.

After we gained the summit ridge we began traversing which was awesome because of the heady exposure on both sides. At times it was on the side of the formation, as below:

And at other times it was along the knife edge ridge, as below. Verrrr nice!

The route climbed over 1000 meters of elevation (3300 feet), almost all of it on Via Ferrata. Upon reaching the summit proper we paused for some posed pictures, here is one of me looking pensive as I gaze out over my kingdom:

This Via Ferrata was far longer than the Swiss Klettersteig that we had done, and was a lot more involved as there was only cable and no steps even on steep sections. We continued to traverse along the ridge towards a col where a cable car was located. Here is one of Roanne coming along the final stretch of the ridge, and one of me with the gondola station in the background:

One strange thing about the Dolomites is that it seemed anywhere you could climb to you could also reach by tram, so rather than savoring the summit views by yourself you will be milling around with a bunch of tourists who took the tram up. As we neared the cable car station there were remnants of Italian army fortifications from the first world war that were pretty interesting to examine. Here is the view looking out from one of the bunkers that had been tunneled into the mountain side, and a sign that gave the history of the fortifications (unfortunately it was all in Italian so we couldn't glean much information):

The route ended at the cable car station, at which point the normal descent for the route would have taken us down a steep couloir and put us about 5 km down the road from our car. Not relishing the prospect of the long walk down followed by a long walk back to our car, we decided to make the most of the tourist infrastructure and ride down on the cable car. This also put us down the road from our car, but at least we wouldn't have to do the first part of the hike. On the way down Roanne overheard two Brits talking, and asked them if we could hitch a ride back up to our car. They were really nice, and agreed to drop us off at our car, saving a long trudge up the road. We got back to the fiat at around 4:30, and thought about trying to do another short hike, but decided instead to lounge by an alpine lake and play cards. Here is a photo of the happy couple relaxing by the lake after a good day on the Marmolada:

After an hour or so of enjoying the sunshine, we headed back to Bolzano on a different route that took us over some high alpine passes, including the Passo di Sella (maybe named for Italian cyclist Emanuel Sella before he tested postive in this years Giro d'Italia) which topped out at 2500m. The roads were amazing to drive, tons of tight switchbacks, and we saw many giant limestone formations that would have been amazing to climb. Below is one fine specimen:

We made it back to Bolzano around 8pm, and had some good pizza for dinner (after all, we were in Italy even though it felt more like Deutschland). During dinner a violent thunderstorm started, which made for a wet but fun mad dash back to the car park and hotel.

Thursday, Aug. 7

We rose at 8:00am and headed into town to return the car and visit the Otzi museum before catching a train to Lake Como. The man at the rental office (BZ rent) was super nice, and let us keep our bags in his office for the morning while we visited the museum. If anyone is ever in Bolzano looking to rent a car, definitely go to BZ Rent, they were way nicer (and cheaper) than the other option, Hertz. From the rental car place we walked on to the Otzi museum, passing rows and rows of scooters (awesome!) along the way:

The Otzi museum we really interesting, we only had about 2 hours to spend there but definitely could have spent at least twice that. We were introduced to Otzi two years ago on a Silverstar Ski Vacation by our friend Matthias (a.k.a. Matze), and were delighted to finally see him in the flesh (dried out as it may have been). For anyone not familiar with Otzi here is a brief synopsis: he is a well preserved human from about 5000 years ago who was found in a glacier about 20 years ago. I won't go into more detail since wikipedia is probably a better source than my bad memory, but it was definitely time well spent to spend a morning with Otzi before moving on to Lake Como. After bidding Otzi farewell we headed to the train station to catch the 12:30pm train to Como. This train was longer than expected due to having to return south to Verona before heading west and north to Como, and we didn't get in until 6:00pm. Along the way we stopped in the Milan train station which was pretty cool, really big. Here is a photo of it, although you don't really get a sense of the scale with only being able to see two tracks:

We had not reserved a hotel in Como ahead of time due to poor internet access at our last hotel, so upon arrival we wandered into town, bought some gelato, and started looking for appropriate lodgings. Luckily we happened upon a really nice hotel called Albergo Firenze that had availability, so we checked in and then went out to explore the town a bit. We decided to stop for dinner at a random place on the lake which didn't turn out to be very good. From our restaurant experiences we formulated a set of rules for eating well in a foreign city: (1) avoid establishments with outside seating and plastic chairs on busy thoroughfares; (2) find smaller and quieter places that are busy and are off the main strips. We nicknamed the pushy head waitress Ursula, and after a sub-par dinner we headed back to the hotel for a good sleep that started as soon as the cover band that was performing in the square across from our hotel finished belting out Shania Twain cover songs.

Friday, Aug. 8

We rose at 8:00am, and after a good breakfast we walked to a bike store that had been recommended for renting some road bikes. Our plan for the day was to do a road ride that would take us part of the way around Lake Como, and cover some of the same roads and climbs used in monuments of cycling such as the Giro d'Italia and the Giro do Lombardia. The bike shop was really nice, and as we waited for our Wilier rentals (the same brand ridden by the Italian Lampre team) we perused the store, noticing (among other things) a nice Paolo Bettini (at that time the world champion and olympic champion) helmet:

Half an hour later we rolled out of the ship on our matching Wilier road bikes, outfitted with our pedals and shoes that we had brought along. The owner had recommended a route for us and given us a map, so we headed north out of Como along the lake, towards the town of Bellagio. The riding was really fun, with the exception of some hair raising tunnels we had to pass through where we felt that at any moment we would be run down by crazy espresso-fueled Italians driving their Ferraris. Here is a shot of Roanne on the stretch between Como and Bellagio (you can see the steep slopes in the background that rise up from the lake, those are what make the riding here so awesome!):

About an hour later we reached Bellagio, which is apparently quite a tourist destination for it's quaint ships and lovely cobbled streets. We stopped here for an espresso and a capresi sandwich at lake side cafe, which was very nice. Normally I don't drink coffee, but I wanted our outing to have an authentic feel to it so I did what I had to do. Below on the left I am seen savoring my refined beverage. Roanne didn't feel the same need to blend in with the tifosi, so she can be seen on the right happily sipping a fruity tourist drink:

From Bellagio we then headed back south on the opposite shore of Lake Como (this may not make sense, but if you looked at a map it would). This took us up a fabled climb known as the Madonna di Ghisallo, named for the shrine on top that is dedicated to the woman who is the patron saint of cyclists. The climb was amazing, steep with lots of amazing switchbacks. Here is a photo of Roanne making her way up some of the aforementioned switchbacks, with Lake Como in the background:

Too good to be true! I almost want to go book a flight to Italy just writing about it. Here are a couple more photos of Roanne and myself on the climb:

So awesome! Upon reaching the top we saw the shrine that is dedicated to the Madonna di Ghisallo herself. Below on the left is a photo of Roanne raising her arm in triumph as she glides effortlessly past the shrine, and on the right is a photo from this years Giro di Lombardia of current world champion Alessandro Ballan cruising past the same shrine with Spaniard Joquaim Rodriguez in hot pursuit:

Near the shrine there was a sculpture dedicated to the greatest sport of all, cycling, and a few hundred feet further there was a cycling museum:

Of course we stopped at the museum and went through it, we were happy to be informed by a sign on the outside that there was a 'grimpeur' discount of one euro off for those who had ridden their bikes up the climb to get to the museum. This was a nice surprise, although considering how amazing the climb was, I felt like we should have paid extra to get in since we had so much more fun on the way there than someone who drove up it. There was also bike parking inside the museum, and there were no funny looks as we walked around in our spandex. Here is a shot of Roanne beside the discount sign:

Isn't Italy amazing? The museum was really cool, lots of vintage bikes and jerseys from 1900 onwards. I would have liked to have stayed longer, but I was torn between perusing all the cycling memorabilia and getting back outside to ride on the amazing roads. From the museum we continued south and descended a bit. then headed back up another climb that would take us over the ridge and drop down to the shore of the lake just north of Como. The climb was fun, lots more switchbacks and an optional route called the Mur di Sormano (that we avoided) that climbed 300 meters with an average gradient of 17% (min 5%, max 25%)!!! Wawa wee wah! I took a look down this hill and it looked insane, there is no way we would have been able to ride up it. Another interesting thing that we saw on the way up was a guy heading up on Rollerblades with full body armour on, sweating like a demon. Apparently they go blazing down these hills on rollerblades with body armour and no way of stopping, totally insane. It seemed to be some sort of sport also, because he had a Team Italy (squadra azzurri) skinsuit on over his body armour. He smiled and seemed to be in good spirits, I don't think I would have been too happy if I was headed for certain death or massive injury like that. We stopped on top at a little cafe where we had some cold drinks and chocolate, and the owner showed us all his young son's cycling trophies. Oh man, isn't Italy amazing?!? Maybe I should be moving to Italy instead of Switzerland! The descent down to the other side of the lake was hands down the most fun I have ever had on a road bike, 3000 feet of descending with endless banked hairpin switch backs on fresh black top, almost no traffic, and the sparkling waters of Lake Como visible below. Mama mia!!! Words can't do it justice, and I was having too much stinkin' fun to stop for pictures, so you'll just have to go ride it yourselves. Tell me when you are going, I'll come with you. The danger in this part of the route arose not from the high speeds we reached on the twisting mountain road, but from the possibility that I might pass out from how much fun I was having. After reaching the road that paralleled the lakeshore we headed back to Como to return the bikes, and then showered and headed out for dinner at a restaurant recommended by the hotel staff. This ristorante was much better than our dud from the previous night, and we enjoyed a great dinner before hitting the sack. What a day!

Saturday, Aug. 9

We had planned to sleep in this morning, but my internal fun clock roused me at 8am so soon after we headed down to breakfast. Originally we had planned to head to Milan on this final full day of our trip so that Roanne could cruise the shops of this fashion capital, but the night before I had uttered a fervent prayer to the Madonna di Ghisallo in hopes that she would send Roanne some omens and we could stay another day in the cycling hotbed of Lombady. Much to my delight, Roanne decided she would rather stay in Como for another day, so I guess the Madonna heard my pleas! Upon hearing this news I tried to subtly proffer the idea of going for another road ride, but Roanne didn't seem keen on that so I decided to quit while I was ahead and just be happy doing whatever Roanne wanted to do in Como for the day. We decided it might be fun to rent a scooter and driver around the entire lake (about 175km), but when we went to inquire all the scooters were already reserved so we opted for a boat cruise on the lake instead. Here is a photo of our boat coming in to dock, and then one of Roanne in her fashionable glasses getting ready to cruise:

The cruise was really nice (though it paled in comparison to our previous day's exploits), and we enjoyed great views as we headed north from Como. Here are a couple of the palatial lakeside residences that we saw:

Here is a good view looking north up the lake, showing how hilly the surrounding countryside is. If you were wondering why this region is so good for cyclists, here is your answer!

There was one particularly splendid villa that was situated on a small peninsula that jutted out into the lake and had amazing landscaping, here are two views of it, one on the approach showing the peninsula and the other closer up:

And here are two more shots, one of a posh hotel (with some limestone cliffs in the background, apparently there is some good climbing in the region as well) and the other of a nice village that we had ridden through on our bikes the day before:

We disembarked in Bellagio and explored the town a bit on foot before grabbing some pizza for lunch and heading back to Como. Here is a shot of Roanne on the cobbled streets of Bellagio:

It was pretty hot when we returned to Como and we thought about going for a swim, but upon inquiring in the tourist office we learned that no one swims in the part of the lake near Como, so we ate gelato and played cards on the lake shore for a while before Roanne headed off to do some shopping and I headed out for a run up the hill at the edge of Como. The top of this hill has great views and is also ascended by a funicular. It turned out be a longer climb than I thought, gaining about 2500 feet of elevation. The run took about an hour, and on the way down I saw another enthusiast running up. It is always nice to see another like minded maniac. After regrouping at the hotel, Roanne and I headed out for the final night out of our vacation (boooo!!!). We rode the funiculore up to Brunte (the hill I had run up that afternoon) for a great view of the surrounding countryside in the setting sun, we could look across a valley to the hills surrounding Varese, where the world cycling championships would be held in a couple of months. We then headed back down to Como, and after our good luck with our previous night's recommendation from the hotel staff we decided to try another of their picks, and had an amazing dinner at a Tuscan restaurant in a quiet side street. We shared some Tuscan-style pasta (I had never heard of it but it was very good, sort of thick noodles with a different texture than normal pasta) with pesto and a filet mignon with a black truffle wine sauce (might as well pull out all the stops on the last night of the vacation!), both amazing. After finishing with some tiramisu, we walked around the town before heading back to the hotel and packing our bags for our departure the following morning.

Sunday, Aug. 10

We rose at 7:00am, had some brekkie, then caught the train the Milano Malpensa airport where we boarded a flight for New York to Cincinati to Salt Lake City. We were sad to leave, but buoyed by the thought that we would soon be moving to either the Dolomites or the Swiss Alps. Monto bene!