Into the Dolomitis

Hotel Greif Breakfast

Meusili Bar

 We have been treated to some very nice breakfasts this week, but the Hotel Greif I am sure will top them all.  The spread was full of bread, muesli, fruit, cold cuts, cheeses, eggs, cakes pastries and much more.  They were all of high quality.  They even had special tea timers for the perfect steep.

Garden Top Dinning

Hotel Greif Bread

Not only was the food great, but the outside roof terrace was a perfect setting.  Luckily for us jet lagged people the breakfast opened up early for a group of Japanese tourists.  They all ate inside so we had the outside garden terrace to ourselves.  Well there was one other person and he happened to be one of our fellow Trek Travel riders!

Down Dog

 I had three agendas for the morning.  Find sunglasses (I thought I had left them at home, turned out I had just put them in a secret pocket), go to the Museo Archeologico (home of Otzi), and to meet our Trek Travel Group.  The Mueseum opened at ten so we did a little "yoga for cyclists" to get our blood flowing.  I have a lot of room for improvement, Lynne is a pro!

Bolzano Walk

Bolzano Walk

Locks on Ponte Talvera

South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology

We took a morning stroll and on our way we came across a bridge that was full of people's locks.  A lot of them had love symbols on them with names, so we were guessing they might be locks symbolizing the marriage bonds.

I had heard a Radio Lab podcast about two hikers who found a corpse in 1994 at about 10,000 feet.  It turned out that this was not just any corpse, but a 5,000 year old mummy.  The podcast is well worth a listen, as it is part adventure part murder mystery.  I guess this must be the most famous thing to happen in Bolzano because they built a whole four-story museum to house and tell the story of Otzi.  He was about 5 foot 4 inches and forty years old.  He was very strong and would have been a good cage fighter.  Otzi's skin and bones look like a dried out long-roasted chicken, but is pretty much in tact, skin and all.  They have a perfectly preserved cap and part of his poncho.  You can try on a replica set as part of an exhibit, which are a bear skin cap and a goat-skin poncho.  The big mystery is whether it had sleeves or not.  Otzi is housed in a freezer at the museum, which keeps him frozen but moist.  You can peer through a little window to see him.

Our Trek Travel started at 1PM as we were picked up in a van and driven to our first destination, Nova Levante.  The goal of the first day was to get our bikes fitted and do a moderate ride to get used to the bikes and fine tune our fit.  Our two guides, Jason and Wiebe (VeeBa), gave us a great overview of the trip.  Wiebe is a very interesting guy, but I will talk about him more in a later blog.  Our bikes were given nice red white and blue ribbon on the seat to celebrate the 4th.  I also wore my Stars and Strips Jersey.  There are ten people on the trip plus the two guides.  The guides alternate days riding and driving the van.  Van driving is apparently not the favored task, though driving like an Italian looks exhilirating.  The guy driving the van is the Vanimal.  The van is full of cold drinks and all sorts of nice food.

Trek Emonda

First View of Dolomiti

Our Day One ride was from Nova Levante to Moena (where we are staying).  This route includes one climb, the Passo Costalunga, a 9.9K climb at 5% gradient.  We started climbing right out of the gate, no warm up needed, as it was hot.  We made a nice easy pace and drank a lot of water. Todays ride was very tranquillo!  And the scenery was spectacular!

View up Passo Costalunga

Lago di Carezza

Lago di Carezza with Dolomitis

Hotel Dolomiti Front Garden

Our ride and all our rides end at our Hotel Dolomiti.  They had a nice cooler waiting for us chalked full of cold beers!  After checking in and cleaning up we had a social hour before a group dinner.  The Hotel provided nice wines and snacks in their front garden and we had a nice time chatting with our fellow Trek Travelers.  After dinner it was bed time and get ready for a hard day tomorrow.