Europe June 2011 -- Dolomite Road & Merano to Lake Como

After lunch in Lienz, Austria, we started on our way into Italy.  I had planned to go on a couple of high passes on side roads for this drive to Merano, but after the previous night's experience and looking at the weather at the tops of some of these mountains, we decided to stay down somewhat lower and travel on SS241, known as the Dolomite Road.  

It lived up to its reputation as a beautiful drive and had plenty of twisty parts and elevation to be exciting.  Thank goodness Trout agreed that going over a high pass just to say he did it wasn't worth it if it was so socked in at the top and you couldn't see anything.

So these are the Dolomites from the passenger side of the car.

As far as Alps driving goes, this was my favorite route.  There was just something about them when we came through on the train from Munich to Venice in 2009.

Don't be too distracted by the reflection of my hand holding the map...

Trout wanted me to be sure to get a picture of the road, so we actually pulled off to take this one.

We got lower down and started to see some farming activity.  There was more of that to see on the way to Lake Como.  It doesn't seem to matter how steep the slope, those Italians take advantage of every bit of arable land.

We went through Bolzano and on a smaller road to Merano.  This was just an overnight, but we stayed in a really nice place called the Windsor Hotel.  Merano is very close to the border with Austria and the place seemed more Austrian than Italian.  This whole Tyrol area did go back and forth between Italy and Austria/Germany, so that makes sense.

Merano is a spa town surrounded by mountains.  It's another one of the many lovely small towns we stayed in that has a river running through it.  I didn't get any pictures, so you will need to go here to see some.

We had a nice dinner at a pizza place we walked to in town.  We stopped and had some gelato on the way back, but forgot about not sitting at the tables if we walked up and took it away, so even though there were many outside tables free, we were shooed away.  We walked about 20 paces to a bench along the river and sat and finished our gelato while we watched people come and go from the gelato shop.

The next morning we had a Italian/German combo breakfast.  That means not as big as a German one but not just a roll and coffee either.

Then we got on the road for Lake Como.  I had originally planned for us to go over Stelvio Pass to get there.  That's why we stayed in Merano.  But we decided not to and took the SS42 route instead.  We did have a good Google map to follow, but we found the signage great as well.

The road was primarily through farming country and small villages.  If you click on this picture, you can see what's on the display in the car better.

From a distance, we thought these were vineyards, but they were actually huge fruit orchards.

Many of the trees were netted.

We did go through some mountains.

And on some twisty roads. 

There were a few little villages.

 The road was in good shape but a bit narrow.

This fruit truck and the bus got a little close to each other.

We could see Italian hill towns.

We could also see some farm houses.

And we could see one of our favorite vehicles, the 3-wheeled small truck.  I'm not sure who the manufacturer was of the ones we saw, but the Piaggio Ape is a sample of what they look like.  Trout dubbed them Pinocchiomobiles.

We had such a nice breakfast in Merano that we waited to have a light lunch in Varenna at the hotel where we stayed.  More about Lake Como in the next posting.