This morning I was surprised to wake as late as 07:40. I was first at breakfast at 08:10. A table was laid for me, and a larger table for 7. So I wasn’t the only guest after all. The elderly woman was serving breakfast, and offered me coffee, Italian style or latte. I took the latte, without thinking. Breakfast here was OK, but not outstanding. At checkout I learned that it was not even included. He said he would charge me cinquanta instead of quaranta otto, OK? Sure, the brekky was well worth €2.
Ready to take off on the bike (which had, as usual, involved quite a ritual), I saw the sign on a nearby stone wall saying Belvedere 1.5km. The views were pretty good everywhere, so this must be something special.
It was, but the best view was just 200m below the hotel, with the sun shining through gaps in the cloud. I just sat there on the bike for 5 minutes and drank it in. I photographed it again. Film is cheap nowadays, and this time the sun was shining.
A couple of km below, at an intersection, Cortina was only 25km away on the SP 638 to the left. I very nearly decided to chance the 2236m Passo Giau (one of the toughest climbs used in the Giro d’Italia), instead of going the long way. The sky looked a lot better, but I had seen a parked car with 5cm of snow on its roof. It must have been up there somewhere overnight, and it was only 2.5 degrees right here. I didn’t want to climb another 800 metres, and set Zumo for Belluno, to be sure we went down to the Piave Valley.
The road seemed unfamiliar, even allowing for traversing it in the opposite direction to yesterday. Why were we climbing? It wasn’t the same road. We went over Passo Staulanza, at 1773 metres, and zero degrees. The road was the SP 251, not the SR 203 through Agordo.
I was glad, it was a great road. It’s good, sometimes, that Zumo does have a mind of his own. If, like me, you like your holiday to unfold, rather than preplanning it in detail, a GPS adds an interesting element of unpredictability. Werner Heisenberg would be pleased.
The SP 251 reached the valley at Longarone. Belluno was now out of the way, to the south, so I set Zumo for Cortina, after ensuring that this time, he had no discretion about the route. It was a nice road, climbing gently, quite busy. On a road like this, there is almost always a vehicle right behind me, wanting to go faster, speed limit notwithstanding. At one stage, it was a Mercedes van. I did a beautifully judged manoeuvre, overtaking two tankers just as the passing lane tapered off to nothing. I’ll be right now, for a while. Within a kilometre I saw an opportunity for concealment I could not pass up, and pulled out for what was probably my 4th comfort stop since that ill-considered latte at breakfast.
At 12:45 I arrived at the hotel, and thought I would see if I could check in.
I pressed the intercom button. Ja! Huh, have I entered Austria already? He let me in, and not having a word of English, or Italian, mimed the procedure, when leaving the hotel, of locking your room key in a cabinet in the lobby, in its own compartment corresponding to your room, and removing the key to the compartment to take with you. By this time, I urgently needed my 5th comfort stop. He showed me how to key in the combination to open the front door. My fluent German enabled me to understand the complex code: eins, zwei, drei.
In my room, which was not very big, perhaps 12 square metres, it was lovely and warm. I had a long shower, my second in 6 hours, to raise my core temperature above hypothermia. Most hotel shower recesses are so smalI here that you have to plan carefully how to retrieve the soap when you drop it. Although this bathroom was also compact, it was well laid out, and the shower recess was large enough for 2 people (but I was alone!).
I connected the phone and ipad to to wifi to get the photos moving from the iphone to the icloud to the ipad so I could transfer them to the blog.
Just quietly, I think Apple should program typing such that if the letter “i” appears alone, it should automatically be capitalised. That would save a keystroke each time. Or I should stop writing in the first person.
Ian put all his motorcycling layers back on, as he had no coat, and set off for Centro for lunch. On his way out, he checked the keys to the compartments. There were only about 3 different key patterns. By trying a few keys, he could obtain the key to any room in the hotel whose guest was out. So much for security. In his favourite Italian hotel, in Amalfi, there was no pretense at security; he was instructed to leave his room key hanging on an unsupervised rack at the foot of the stairs.
In the centre, apart from a few obvious tourists shuffling about, it was almost deserted. Almost all of the fancy shops were closed. Things needed for a functioning town were open, such as the bank. I was wrong before, this is not a ski resort (although the wifi in the hotel seems to work properly), so being a summer resort, it’s off season now, and very quiet. I have neglected until now to mention how ridiculously beautiful its location is. Everywhere you look, you want to photograph, although you know the photos will never do it justice.
I found a small bar, again cosy and warm in the Austrian way, and ordered a panini and coffee. I really wanted an excuse to sit there all afternoon, as the clouds had returned and it was now raining, actually snowing lightly. My decision not to go over the pass was validated. In the toilette, the Austrian influence showed again, a squat toilet!
Here in my cosy hotel room, with the TV showing talk shows in Italian, I can at least write this. I secretly hope I can learn Italian subliminally, without doing any work. And I can drop the photos in (they arrived from the icloud). Only one userid needed here for both iphone and ipad, but somewhat irritatingly, it makes you log in again after a couple of hours.
Because the phone was flat, I downloaded tomorrow’s “Age” newspaper into the ipad and took that to dinner. I had not seen any news from home for more than 3 weeks, and had not missed it. Dinner was goulash zuppe and spaghetti carbonara, yet again. The carbonara was better in Rimini.
I added text to days 14 and 20.