Home -> Europe -> Italy -> Travelogue 2004 -> Thursday 20 May

Through the Alps and the Dolomites

The sun is shining brightly when we get up and we leave early for our journey through the Alps. Not by elephant as Hannibal once did in Roman times, but surrounded by all the comfort we could wish for, in our car.

As said before, we really love mountains, we never get bored of seeing them. We are already happy when we see hills, but mountains like they have here, are even much better. A lot of people seem to share this feeling for mountains. These rough mountains give evidence of how nature doesn't care about the little humans, although they are not untouched by them. We can imagine the desire of people to conquer these magnificient, silent monsters, maybe to overcome the feeling of smallness. We don't feel it that way, we just keep admiring these majestical giants.

The mountain tops are still covered with snow and therefore there is a lot of meltwater with temperatures of 25 degrees Centigrade, even at a height of 2000 meters. The lakes colour beautifully green-bluish from this water, like the Fernsteinsee at left.

This time we leave Austria through the Brennerpass (€ 8 toll), but for some reason we had expected to drive through a very long tunnel. But we are mistaken since the tunnel itself is only a few hundred meters long, we have come through much longer ones today.

In Italy we drive over two passes along narrow roads, which are quite steep going up. The first is Passo Pennes, at a height of 2217 meters. For many kilometers we crawl we ascend in our small car while motorcyclists are racing past us.

It must be a wonderful feeling, riding a motor on these narrow, winding and steep roads, and we see hundreds of them. But often it seems to go wrong when they start overtaking other vehicles just before curves. And would they really enjoy the scenery, with so much speed and a lot of traffic along these dangerous roads. Maybe it is also the feeling of danger which is attractive. We rather enjoy the landscape from our car, although we are scared a few times by motors coming out of a curve and ending up almost in front of our car.

After a short break and a cup of delicious cappucino (in no other country can it be made better) we continue and drive into the Dolomites. At least, after we have finally found a way out of Bolzano. In our opinion it is too busy in the cities here, and not relaxing at all to drive a car through it. Another thing is the signposting, which almost can't be worse.

Eventually we find the road that we want to take, along he mountain massif of the Pale di San Martino, 3192 meters high. A very impressive mountain which towers above it's neighbours and dominates the area.

After this pass we continue in the direction of Venice, or rather the peninsula opposite of Venice, so we can cross by boat tomorrow. It is only 100 km. but we first end up in a traffic jam and stay there for almost an hour. In the end we can go on and pass cars of the police, the fire department and ambulances. Near the cars we see one half of a motor, the front being completely crushed.
Near Treviso we are confronted again with the Italian way of signposting and we drive in circles for some time before we are sure we are going in the right direction. The distance to a certain town changes from 32 km. to 14 within a few minutes. Our roadmap seems to be more reliable but the scale is not detailed enough. So, we follow our sense of direction and use some common sense and that works much better. Nevertheless, it has taken us more than 3 hours to cover the last 100 kilometers and finally arrive at the campsite we have been looking for.

Soon we have put up the tent, but much sooner we get acquainted with the local musquitoes who have a large population here. We will be scratching again, the next days! Elisabeth has enough appetite for a cup of soup but she isn't prepared for the bowl that she gets: almost a whole soup tureen. We don't care, we have (plenty of) food, a place to sleep, what else could someone need?

It has been a long and tiring day, especially the last hours in the traffic. We knew that the north of Italy is a busy place but we are surprised by the large number of tourists that are already occupying the country in this part of the year. Not our favourite hobby, sharing a country with so many fellow tourists, but we have to pay this price when we want to see some of the highlights of this country, like Venice.

Travel through Europe and Africa

with Elisabeth and Teije