Pictures from my vacation in Italy in September/October 2005
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September 23 My flight to Munich had a stopover in Chicago Ohare. Unfortunately, the airplane was very late in arriving, and then once it was finally serviced, there wasn't a crew available to drive it from the service facility to the gate. So it ended up being a layover of more than 6 hours. There was an Oompah Band from Munich that was also going to be on our flight, so our pilot talked them into entertaining us with some songs and dancing to help lighten the mood for all of us while we endured the long wait. |
September 25 I eventually made it to Munich and caught the flight to Bolzano. I stayed at a very nice hotel in downtown Bolzano, Hotel Greif. The next day, I called our tour guide, Detlev, who picked me up and brought me to the hotel we were using for the tour, the Hotel Gardena Grodnerhof, in the village of Ortisei. This is a very nice 5 star wellness hotel, with excellent health facilities, a friendly staff and a very good restaurant. This is my room at the Gardena Grodnerhof. The website for the hotel is: http://www.gardena.it/ |
September 25 This is what the hotel looks like from the outside. This region of Italy is known as the Sud-Tirol. It was won from Austria in the war, but still retains much of it's Austrian heritage. I found that most often, German was the preferred language (not that I speak much German or Italian!). |
September 25 This is looking up the river going through the center of Ortisei, towards Passo Gardena. At this point, the weather was still running a comfortable 70 degrees or so. |
September 25 This is more in the business part of downtown Ortisei, where the shops are. It looks like the busy season here must be in the winter, judging by all of the winter sports shops. |
September 25 Another view from downtown Ortisei, with some of the tall mountains in the background. This evening, all of us in the tour group met for the first time, and we did the paperwork for our rental motorcycles. Our tourguide, Detlev, was on the Alps Meditteranean Tour Jane and I did last year. Detlev discussed some of the ridings Do's and Don't's with us, and told us a little about the routes that we would be riding over the next week. |
September 26 Although this picture was taken on our last riding day together, I'm putting it here to introduce the tour group. From left to right: Me (Jim), Paula and Dan, Dixie and BJ, Mary and Philip, Detlev (our tour guide), Bill, Steve and Margo, and John. Thanks to Philip for sending me this picture, since I didn't have any good group pictures. |
September 26 This morning, we all went out for our first ride. This is Passo di Gardena, one of the closest passes to our hotel. Since everything in this region has both an Italian name and a German one, this pass is also known as Grodner Joch. The guy in the striped shirt seemed fascinated with the R1200GS I was riding. |