Hotel Sport Santa Caterina Valfurva

Thedrive from Davos down to the Stelvio Pass was pretty good, and we stopped a few times to take it all in, and to let the engine cool down a bit, as it was working fairly hard.


We took a small road from Santa Maria, and that was really good, with some tight U bends, and magnificent views. This road took us across the Swiss/Italian border.


And then we joined the ...

... in the Ciastel de Tor (Ladin for Castle of the Tower) in San Martino, which was fascinating, as it covers the period from when the first structures were built around 1600BC to their recent history - I found particularly fascinating that archaeologists found writing on stones which they dated to about 600BC and which has not yet been deciphered, so it's unknown what language they spoke before Roman colonisation. We forget in the modern world that not much more than a ...

At the fourth day of our trip, we were already ahead of our initial schedule and really looking to ride in on of the most beautiful parts of Europe: Southeast Switzerland. We left on a beautiful summer morning from Ried and followed the Inn bike trail all the way to the Swiss border (look it up at tirolwest.at/innradweg/). After crossing the border on the Road 27, we followed the bike trail right up from the border, first ...

... more tricky, the slopes were completely mogulled in various places meaning that I had to really slow down and concentrate to get across these sections. I cannot lie and say that this was the best part of my holiday. Skiing to get to the glacier really wasn't pleasant and neither was waiting about 45 minutes to catch the three consecutive cable cars up the mountain. The views from the top of the mountain were spectacular. In retrospect, I'm glad I did the ...

Poschiavo, our destination for the day trip over the Albula Pass was a very nice, tidy town with a good choice of eating places and proximity to some wonderful scenery. A good alternative to the main Swiss resorts. It's also very handy to the Italian lakes Como, Maggiore and Lugano and the train trips of the Simplon entry to Switzerland.
On the day that we arrived ...

Today I was very excited and happy to be going home. The worst part of the day was saying goodbye to dad at the airport. I managed to overtake people as I walked to the plane and scored a window seat. Soon I was flying over mountains, from up here I could see the war memorial on Monte Grappa. I could clearly see isolated towns in the valleys below. It was really pretty, but not ...

... back from Ireland to Merano as I thought there were a few things that I could do for NYE here...but when I got back...everyone left town or things were booked out! doh! Was a bit of a lonely NYE. Marco invited me to dinner at Seven where lots of other people were..huge 7 course meal...was a bit of a quiet table though with three 16 y/o girls who didn't say much. Marco left for work before midnight and everyone ...

Went away for the long weekend to Fran's family cabin in the mountains near Madonna di Campiligia (North west of Trento and 1.5hr south west of Merano). Was so lovely to get away from Merano for a bit. Not having a car is so restrictive and can make things a bit lonely sometimes. We spent the weekend basically eating ...

I miss the aussies! THe hostel here is really clean, and it's cheap, but there are no other english speakers. I hope that they (the santorini six) read this and appreciate how great it was to backpack together. Anyway, I've had to kill a couple days in Trent before i can go visit Francesco (italian friend), and it's bor-ing bor-ing ...

... wildly and furiously for us to turn the car off, which we eventually did. Admittedly Big Green is a bit noisy when he is cold and he does blow a bit of smoke, but haven't these old Germans heard of manners? All they had to do was ask nicely, but instead they showered us with God-knows-what in that awful guttural tongue of theirs. I guess 75 years of listening to that language gets to you eventually. In retrospect, perhaps our Dutch license plates didn't help matters...