Monday, August 9, 2010

Day One (6/7). The Great Motorcycle Adventure Begins: From Lake to Alps.

We had planned a short travel day, as we knew it’d take the morning to get the bikes and get out of Milan. The folks at Mototouring were quite helpful, though we were disappointed that we did not get the bikes we had hoped for, the latest news we received upon arrival that one of the 800s had been crashed the day before and a like replacement was not available. We chose a 650 single as a substitute. We rode back to the hotel, packed up and managed to get out of Milan with a minimum of misdirection. WE WERE ON OUR WAY!
The Three Amigos are ready to Ride!

Our main goal for the day was the legendary Lake Como (you now, where that Clooney guy lives), which is only about 80 km up the road from Mian. I’d be an easy “break-in” for us. Plus my friend Bob Boston and his wife, Judy, just happened to be staying near the lake, celebrating a wedding anniversary and had invited us to dinner. But to ‘fill out’ the day I proposed we not go directly to Como, the town, but take the lake’s shoreline from Lucca to Bellagio to Como, following the inverted “V” of the two legs of the lake.

Beautiful Bellagio (not in NV!)
The Lake Como shoreline
It was then a short hop to Cennoggia, where Bob was. The gross distance was ‘only 150 km’. But what a route, winding up and down through dips and curves along the lakeside until our hands were ready to fall off from tugging the handlebars right and left, hour after hour. We were a bit late for our dinner date, but Bob and Judy were gracious and forgiving and we enjoyed dinner on the waterfront.


Lovely 'downtown' Como


Unfortunately, our sleep destination was a small Swiss village, Airolo “just a few clicks up the road’. With them came a combination of creeping darkness, a sudden transition from very urban (and urbane) to very rural, and a big dip in temp as we climbed to the alpine foothills. Like creepy music in a movie, knew something different was coming up. We swooped along narrowing, but secure two lane roads as the mountains and their fog closed in on us. The rustic nature of the area was even heightened even more by the smell of creosote from all the wood in process around. Our path traced slow moving water at the lakes to rushing river to smaller cascading rapids to a network of small, fast moving streams tumbling down from the snow at the mountaintops. We were getting there, we knew, if darkness and hypothermia didn’t take us first.

However, the staff at the small hotel, the Fiorni, was expecting us and could not have been nicer when we arrived, hustling us into the dining room as the kitchen was about to close. And what a pleasant surprise the ‘prix fixe’ menu was-- a hearty Swiss meal with an excellent local wine, topped b dessert whose great taste was matched only by its careful presentation.

Our friendly young female server spoke very good English and we soon learned that she had been employed at Disney World in the Italian Epcot exhibit for a year and then traveled to NYC, Chicago, Miami, and D.C. And we thought we were adventuresome! We learned from her that in that section of Switzerland the common language was Italian though many signs were in German (or I think it was German; is there a unique Swiss lexicon?). Sleep came easy.
O-o-o-o. It gets spooky in the Alps

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