Dolomite Touring Center DTC240A
We started our first day of the tour with a ride around the "Sella" mountains. Those mountains have a nice pass road on each of its sides. As we gained altitude, the weather became quite foggy and unfortunately it started to rain as well and did not stop until the end of the day. But we continued our ride over Passo Gardena, Passo Campolongo and Passo Pordoi, where we stopped for lunch. After that, and still in the rain, we visited the "Karersee" lake, where the barrier of the parking lot did not leave us out at first. Finally we got out of the parking lot and rode back to our hotel in Klobenstein, where we warmed ourselves up in the SPA area.
As the weather looked much more promising today, we enjoyed the famous Passo Mendola and stopped at Monte Penegal to buy a map of the Trentino area, as the peak was covered in clouds. We continued our loop aroung lake "Santa Giustina" and after riding across the passo Palade, we arrived in the "Vinschgau" valley and stopped for lunch. In the afternoon the weather became quite warm as we continued to San Genesio and back to Klobenstein.
Even though it rained when we left the hotel garage in the morning, we had our goal in mind, to reach Cortina the famous ski resort. The conditions were quite tough this day with temperatures reaching down to 5 degrees Celsius on some of the pass roads and constant rainfall. But our tough group did not stop and reached Cortina for lunch in a nice Italian restaurant. We spent quite some time at the lunch table to warm ourselves up, before we headed back west. Luckily everyone´s bike was equipped with heated grips and seats, except for the bike of the tourguide. But there was also one benefit of the weather, almost no traffic on the mountain roads. In rain, we arrived at the hotel and were very proud of ourselves, as we successfully finished the ride in those tough weather conditions.
Today the weather was nice, so we took on the long route to lake Garda. After some stretch on the highway, we had our first stop in Torbole and took some nice pictures of the lake. As the route to the dedicated lunch stop was closed, we looked for another restaurant and found a real hidden treasure, the Ristorante Villa Giulia, where we enjoyed some authentic Italian pasta at the lakeside. In the afternoon we continued our ride on the beautiful mountain roads to lake Idro and lake Ledro, before we headed back to our hotel in Klobenstein.
As we enjoyed our former rides in the Dolomites so much, we wanted to see some more of the Dolomites pass roads and headed for the southern part of it. The Manghen pass road is a real beauty and requires a skilled rider to master it. No problem for our group though. We enjoyed some Italian coffee and hot chocolates in the restaurant on top and also tried some "Frankfurter" sausages. We continued to our lunch stop and enjoyed some Hamburgers and Gnocci. In the afternoon we had to filter through the traffic of Bozen, before we arrived back at our hotel. What a wonderful week, with many impressions, great riding and a lot of fun.