Schloss Sonnenburg San Lorenzo di Sebato

2 planes - 1 bus - 3 trains - 1 taxi later and we arrive in Bressanone. About 40 hrs of transit was well worth it... this place is adorable - its like walking around in a postcard. Have been snowboarding the past 3 days which was lots of fun - bussed up the mountain to Plose ski fields area... have added some pictures and will caption the pictures if we can.

Today was a slow day. We drove out to Auronzo, which is a small lakeside town that we passed on the way to Cortina from Uldine on Sunday. We hiked around the lake and walked around town some, grabbing ice cream and window shopping at the craft and souvenir stores.

Cortina D'Ampezzo, Veneto, Italy brian796

Trey and I did a 30+ mile bike ride from Cortina up to Prato Piazza. The length wasn't difficult, but the 900 meter climb was very strenuous. The ride through the forests, along the river, past a lake, and then up to the top were very scenic. We stopped towards the top to rest and eat our sandwiches. Peanut butter sandwiches never tasted so good after the climb to 2200 meters!

While ...

Today was an easy day. Trey was still suffering from altitude sickness and stayed in the hotel for most of the day.

Cindy, Alycia, and I went up into the Confini del Parco Naturale delle Dolomiti d'Ampezzo nature preserve north of town and hiked the Number 10 trail to go see the Cascata de Fanes waterfalls. The hike was very nice, including wide paved trails, crushed gravel trails, bridges and lots of elevation changes. It allowed ...

... born a sport, enabling access to formerly inaccessible mountainside.
Nowadays the climbs are graded according to difficulty and secured by wires. Climbers wear a harness, a helmet and a Y-shaped safety rope with a carabiner hook on each side of the Y. These then get clipped to the guide wire and advanced from segment to segment of the wire as the climber ascends. Sonja had done this kind of climbing before and after we'd had our instructions and Regine a proper ...

... which took us up to around 3000 Meters. The visibility was endless which meant for good pictures. We were a little cold as we walked on the crusty snow but it was well worth it. After the ride we decided to take advantage of the good weather to drive a circuit through Arabba to Corvara then west to Passo Gardena and back to Penia via Canazai. If you've been here before you will know how beautiful the area is. If you have never ...

... cant mistake when you cross the border from Austria into Italy!!! the perfect roads and maintained properties stop abruptly!! I found what turned out to be a fantastic free camp spot well back off the road, next to a creek,hidden from the highway, bordering a national park because I was getting tired and it was late, but I wasnt very popular! we were going to get murdered in our beds, you dont know what sort of people they are ...

Here there is a map in Google Maps where you will see the cities that we plan to visit this year. All of them are new for us, although we are old Spain travelers. The planned route is the blue one. The red one is called "Plan B" in case of bad weather or other reasons of changing our plans.

Winter season is over, Eastern is over, what ever should I wait to go over before I can start to plan our next holidays ? NOTHING AT ALL !!! This year I would like to blog about our vacations while being on the road and so our friends and our relatives can follow the going on of the driving and ...

... is wel het tegendeel geworden. Er hangt nu al de hele namiddag een dikke mist. Daarbij komt nog eens dat de temperaturen nu positief zijn door de föhnwind. De sneeuw in het dorp is flink aan het smelten. En dan te weten dat het vorige week de hele week stralende zon is geweest ... jammer, jammer, jammer! Gelukkig kunnen we ons hier in het hotel goed bezig houden en laten we het allemaal niet te veel aan ons hart komen.