If you would like to see details about our journey, check out our itinerary and our bike route.
Breakfast came with our room and included the usual buffet item--plus crepes, for a change. We were watching rain in the weather apps, and trying to time our ride to avoid thunderstorms. We had only 17 miles on a dedicated cycle path, but close to 2000 feet of climb, so we figured it would take about 3.5 hours to get to Cortina.
The ride was an easy, steady climb, continuing to follow an old railroad bed. (Standard trains can only climb about 2-3 percent, which is also a very comfortable climb for us. We can handle up to 5-6 percent with fully loaded bikes, but anything over that gets tough after a few hours.)
We stopped for coffee halfway, and stopped again to put raincoats on as the mist turned to drizzle and then to real rain. We rode through towns and villages with stone and timber houses, steel roofs, steep roads. Truly an alpine environment now; the tile roofs from southern Italy would not hold up here in the mountains.
When we arrived, Cortina was crowded and chaotic, with building projects everywhere for the 2026 Olympics. We found our hotel through a maze of construction on a new parking garage under the adjoining plaza, checked in behind a pair of backpackers seeking refuge from the rain, stored our bikes downstairs in the ski room, and settled in to our very nice twin room. It was only 13:00 when we got out of the shower, so we put our raincoats back on and walked 5 minutes to a restaurant where we ordered pastas and aqua frizzante.
The rain was supposed to continue for a few hours, then ease up a bit, so we went back to the room to read, and fell asleep. Ken went out to explore town around 17:00. I was about to join him when he returned, dripping water; it was pouring again. We looked at Google and found a deli not too far away, walked over there and brought salads and chips and pretzels, and went back to eat in the room.
Cortina is much like Vail and Aspen, with narrow winding steers and lots of upscale stores and bars and restaurants. It might be fun to spend a few hours here, but we are glad to be moving on tomorrow.
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| Loading the bikes in Valle di Cadore in the morning, with raincoats handy (Ken's is the green coat bungeed to the back of his bike). |
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| Countdown to the 2026 Olympics in Cortina. It is hard (impossible?) to believe that the town will have all of its construction projects completed before the crowds arrive next February. |
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| Murky skies obscured the mountains around us. |
