Fall riding at beautiful Lago di Garda, Italy

The harbor of Castelletto on Lake Garda

OMG, I am soooo behind on my blog chores! Right now I am starting this entry while sitting in a lounge in the Vienna airport on the way from Riga, Latvia, back to Munich. What happened just barely two weeks ago seems to lie months in the past. Is that what they mean when they say traveling catches you in a time warp?

Shots from excursion Number One, the hilly one

But I'm not going to panic. After all, memories don't start fading until 42.5 days after a trip, according to a Trump-commissioned study, and that can't just be fake news. (Please, can there be a morning when I check my phone and do not find news about that man?) So, in this blogpost, which I may not even finish until I'm back in Lubbock (we'll see...) I'll try to jot down a few thoughts and observations about the five days (and four nights) that we spent on the southern fringes of the Alps. The reason we went down there: The German fake-news weather forecast had told us that Freising would be enshrouded by fog and experience lower-than-normal temperatures, and we wanted to extend summer.

Beater bike ride in the town of Garda and harborside libations

Before loading Sabine's trusty Skoda with bikes and gear and heading south I had spent a few days after my arrival playing bike mechanic and just getting used to the fact that there is autumnal weather in the northern hemisphere. Sure, Iowa had hinted at it, but it's hard to believe when you live in shorts and fly from here to there and and don't have to face real life. It was still sunny in the Munich area, but the temperatures just barely skirted the lower 70s when I arrived.

Gelati after a beater-bike ride on Lake Garda

What a fabulously Italian fridge in our AirBnB!

All that changed once me made it across the Brenner Pass, headed on the autostrada for Alfi from where we were going to head a few miles west to the south-eastern shore of Lake Garda. We had reserved our AirBnB literally less than 36 hours before our arrival, but since this was shoulder to low season there were no issues with finding a nice place.

Our nice apartment was located in the lake-front town of the same name as the lake, Garda. It turned out to be a convenient, central starting point for the various bike trips that we took. Sure, Sabine had brought up the possibility of using one day for a long hike in the mountains, but since I had not brought any real hiking shoes or boots that idea fizzled away. Sorry, Sabine, I should be nicer. :) Instead, after a first-day 10+ mile beater bike ride along the shores of the lake (our host had provided us with townies that were really handy to cover the kilometer to the city center, especially at night) we went on three full-day bike excursions in the next three days, each one completely different from the previous one.

The chapel of Madonna della Corona, built ito the rock of a cliff overlooking the Adige valley

The first one was hilly, if not mountainous. Mind you, we were not in the middle of the Alps but on the southern fringes, yet there are some really, really serious climbs down there. Right from the bat it was uphill, getting away from Garda and into the surrounding hills. And then the real climbing started. On this ride, to the amazing chapel of Madonna della Corona, we climbed close to 6,000 feet during a 37-mile loop. The vistas were spectacular, and the mountains on the east side of the lake were rough and inaccessible looking. The church itself clings to the eastern side of a sheer cliff of the Monte Baldo massif, and we felt a sense of accomplishment when we arrived there in late afternoon, overlooking the Adige valley far, far below that we had traversed just 24 hours earlier. Had it not been for our host, Beatrix', information, we would have never found out about this challenging but rewarding ride.

Look closely lest you'd miss Sabine in this huge, almost 700-year-old tree

Having more or less destroyed our legs on Thursday we decided that Friday's ride would not feature as many feet of climbing, and so we rode from Garda along the beautiful lake all the way to Navene, where several galleries and tunnels make progress on a bike a bit iffy. So it was an out and back--riding once around the lake is a 140-kilometer affair that, I am sure, is rather tedious in parts as there's a lot of motorized traffic. Even out of season, Lake Garda always in-season for motorcyclists and tourist cars. So, whenever the opportunity arose we turned off the narrow two-laner and used whatever cycling path was offered, as long as it was paved (and in some places we even gravelled a bit). By 2021, supposedly, a modern bike path will circumnavigate the entire lake, but this is Italy, and 2021 is near, if you know what I mean.

Even though the weather was a bit gloomy we had a wonderful day of riding. On earlier trips to Lake Garda we had noticed that humidity gets caught between the mountains that line the lake on the west and east (and close it off at the narrow north end; the south, toward northern Italy's flatlands, is wide open, but the moisture from the lake gets stuck and creates hazy conditions. We've seen it on three different trips. But, and this is the weird thing, suddenly the sun will poke through and create magnificent vistas. We took things easy and stopped a few times along the way for a little snack (which usually means either ice cream or a beer) or just a few photos in places such as Castelletto or Malcesine. Once we made it back to Garda, we enjoyed the late-afternoon ambience at the Lido with yet another overpriced shitty beer that still hit the spot.

So that leaves the last of our three long rides. We decided to head down toward Verona, a city that neither of us knew. We threw the bikes into the Skoda, drove a few miles to get out of some of the congestion around the lake (and also avoid that damn hilly stuff east of us), parked, and then connected with an amazing bike path that follows the almost 50-kilometer-long Canale Biffis that takes water from the Adige down into Verona, providing both irrigation along the way and producing hydroelectric power for the region. Whew, that was fun! Think along the lines of a rails-to-trails cycle path but along a much gentler incline following a canal! So, obviously we were not the only ones out on a Saturday morning, and there was an enthusiastic exchange of ciaos that accompanied our progress. It was about a 15-mile ride to the center of the city, completely away from traffic. Long live city planners with cycling vision!

We arrived in town around noon, and despite not having an agenda or plan we soon knew what we were going to do: Spend six euros a pop on a multi-entry ticket that allowed us to visit the four major churches of Verona. The ticket is sold as an instrument of preservation, and, believe it or not, after seeing these beautiful historical monuments I (a notorious tight-wad) don't have a problem paying that money. (And let me tell you, next time I get a chance to visit Notre Dame I won't flinch either supporting the reconstruction efforts. Now, Westminster Abbey's Disneyland-like entry fee rip-off is a different story.)

The amazing thing was that all four of these churches were rather different from one another in architecture, ornamentation, and general ambience, even if all three were inviting and warm. Just for the record, we visited the Basilica de San Zeno, the Basilica di Santa Anastasia, the Chiesa di San Fermo, and at last the main cathedral itself, the Duomo. The wooden ceilings of the first two were simply amazing--neither one of us had seen anything like it before. But the same goes for other aspects of the architecture, and thus we had the feeling that we really saw a superb cross-section of Italian cathedrals.

We hung out for almost too long in the main square, where the ancient Roman coliseum is located. This impressive building is still used for concerts, and as it was a lovely Saturday locals and tourists alike inundated the plaza. It was just so much fun to sit and watch the passers-by while having a snack and a cold beer. Of course, we had to have final gelati as Italians make ice cream like nobody else. When we finally started our return ride it became clear that we needed to use the same direct route along the canal if we didn't want to get caught by the dark. Generally I prefer loops, but as it turned out this was the right choice as we were able to make good time, unencumbered by cars and traffic lights and just zipping back along the waters of the Canale Biffis.

We made it back to the car just before sunset, and we sure were glad that we didn't have to climb over the ridge back to Garda. Instead, we packed the bikes, drove to our AirBnB, showered up, and went out for a final dinner down by the lake. And the next day we headed back up north to the Munich area where Oktoberfest was patiently awaiting my arrival. More about that next time.

Jürgen

(And just in case you were wondering, I managed to put the finishing touches on this blogpost while waiting in the Munich airport lounge for my return flight to Lubbock.)