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Thursday 20 May, through the Alps and the Dolomites

Italy 2004 - part II

Elisabeth & Teije
2006-08-25 19:00:25

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The sun is shining brightly when we get up and we leave early for our journey through the Alps. Not by elephant as Hannibal once did in Roman times, but surrounded by all the comfort we could wish for, in our car.

As said before, we really love mountains, we never get bored of seeing them. We are already happy when we see hills, but mountains like they have here, are even much better. A lot of people seem to share this feeling for mountains. These rough mountains give evidence of how nature doesn't care about the little humans, although they are not untouched by them. We can imagine the desire of people to conquer these magnificient, silent monsters, maybe to overcome the feeling of smallness. We don't feel it that way, we just keep admiring these majestical giants.

The mountain tops are still covered with snow and therefore there is a lot of meltwater with temperatures of 25 degrees Centigrade, even at a height of 2000 meters. The lakes colour beautifully green-bluish from this water, like the Fernsteinsee at left.

This time we leave Austria through the Brennerpass (€ 8 toll), but for some reason we had expected to drive through a very long tunnel. But we are mistaken since the tunnel itself is only a few hundred meters long, we have come through much longer ones today.

In Italy we drive over two passes along narrow roads, which are quite steep going up. The first is Passo Pennes, at a height of 2217 meters. For many kilometers we crawl we ascend in our small car while motorcyclists are racing past us.

It must be a wonderful feeling, riding a motor on these narrow, winding and steep roads, and we see hundreds of them. But often it seems to go wrong when they start overtaking other vehicles just before curves. And would they really enjoy the scenery, with so much speed and a lot of traffic along these dangerous roads. Maybe it is also the feeling of danger which is attractive. We rather enjoy the landscape ...

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