Buongiorno Bella Italia: Arnoldstein to Chiusaforte
We wake up to a beautiful, sunny day - and the sound of Harleys. We see some bikers at breakfast, and when we go out there is a steady stream of Harleys on the road. I then find out that there about 80,000 Harleys underway to the annual Harley parade at Faaker See, a lake not too far from here. That's a lot of motorcycles! Whenever we are off a bicycle path, we see and hear the thousands of Harleys who are on their way to the humongous meet-up.
This day turns out to be one of the highlights of the trip. Soon after the border we turn off the road onto the bicycle path, a disused rail line, and it's a glorious ride. Sometimes the signs aren't easy to find and we can't rely on the route on our GPS, which we planned using Internet apps. The Internet maps are not up-to-date, the posted signs are more reliable, but you have to keep your eyes open.
At one point we miss the signage for a turnoff and continue blithely down the main road. It isdown and when we discover that it has taken us on to a highway, we don't want to go back up so we just keep going. That is a bad decision. We are now on the SS 13 with fast traffic, no shoulder. I am just hoping there will be no tunnels. After what seems like an eternity, but it is only three kilometers, we can exit the highway to a town with a bridge over the river. That is where we are supposed to be, on the other side of the river. We can see the rail-trail trestle high above us and wonder how we can get back up there. It is our good fortunate that in Prerit there is a sign with Ciclovia Alpe-Adria on it. It takes us on an amazingly steep little road, but it gets us there. When we manage to push to the top, we see the sign telling us it was 27%. (Btw, the Ride-with-GPS indicates 10% - obviously inaccurate. I can ride 10%, but this I could hardly push.) The effort is worth it, we are back on the wonderful rail-trail and it is fantastic. I am sorry to have missed even a small part of it.
The rest is a beautiful ride. We find a B&B in Chiusaforte. Chiusaforte was once had a train station and the town is down the hill. We can't find the address and call our hosts. My broken Italian comes in handy. The outcome is that the room isn't ready yet - at 5 pm - but they will meet us in front of the supermarket in an hour and show us the way. It all works out and we can even use the washing machine.
I am hoping there will be a place to eat somewhere, Chiusaforte is a very small town. Yes, there is. It's a pizzeria but the food is terrific. We were more than hungry and ordered much too much. The Italians set a high standard for the quality of their food. The antipasto and main course are excellent. I doubt you would find anything like that in a German village.
