Suffer :huh You DO have a talent for understatement. But at least the grey monstrosity took your eyes away from the huge Hotel Chedi (between the train station & the Oberalp turnoff).
Hi guys! can anyone tell me if the passos are still open in november (9 to 15)??? Or it's to late? I'm planning to go to the EICMA (Milan) and then go for a ride (in real, an re-ride, I was there in september 2012). Is it doable on motorcycle at that month? Thanks! Abr., CP!
A part Stelvio, Timmelsjoch, Stallersattel , the rest will be open . Riding could be very nice -even if cold- in good weather or could be wet and snowy. check the weather at http://www.arpa.veneto.it/previsioni/en/html/meteo_dolomiti.php thats the most reliable for the area.
November is gamble in the Alps. Better chances if you enjoy the EICMA, then go South and explore the Apennines. I like the Northern ranges in Liguria and Tuscany. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apennine_Mountains http://www.mototurismodoc.com/mototurismo/Toscana.php I've lived here for almost 20yrs, have only seen snow twice in the Apennines in November. Far less commercial development there than in the Dolomite/Adamello/Ortler regions in far N Italy. You WILL get lost....and enjoy it.
July can be a gamble in the Alps. The main Dolomite roads will be open - barring fresh snowfall. The bikers will all be gone and the skiers won't be there yet. And rooms will be cheap. If it gets too cold, you're just a half hour or so from the Po Valley and warmer climes. All the more reason for a GPS. Not to navigate by, but to save your daily tracks to revisit later in a "so THAT'S where I was" session. I dump my GPS daily to my laptop and transfer the tracks to Google Earth. Neat toy. Regarding getting lost - Europe is compact, and you just can't get all that lost.
Depends on the type of travel done, too. I mainly travel with a small group of friends and found MP3 players/ GPS's/intercoms /rest of the electronic toys, an absolute annoyance and group-killer with everyone crawling into their little corner once off the bikes and into their accomodation to play with their Dinky-toys. "The fascination of the screen"...any screen, anywhere...is a powerfull one and kills all enthusiasm, post-ride emotionals etc. No talk, no laughs, no bubbling gestures...just dull faces concentrated on 4x3" screens and a half-dozen buttons, entirely absorbed by menus and coloured little bits. No GPS's/digital junk/screens of any sort on my rides anymore....it's a beer/vino, a map, a pointing finger/real people with real faces/ locals/ other travellers and LOTS of laughs and comments instead. The 100's of pics will jog the memory of where I was that day... Jeez, I'm getting old...
Agree. I ride solo, and this process takes me 5 minutes at the end of the day - usually in conjunction with "planning" the next day's ride - which entails PC-based maps as well as (gasp!) paper maps. I've noticed that with any group activity the time taken to perform a task increases with the square of the number of participants. At some point, you can get a group so large that the first riders have given up and gone back to sleep by the time the last ones are roused. Herding cats comes to mind...
If you can count to 1, that's all you need to determine the ideal number in the group. I gave up years ago with 'riding buddies'. Weak bladders, going too fast, get tired easily, don't want the bike to get rained on, a pillion has to stretch her/his legs because she/he has been on the bike for over a half hour...... Not old, wiser.
Thank you all (furbo, Michael J., glitch_oz and RTLover) for the comments! Toscana are great! We where there last year too (we where at the EICMA and then, well). I have done a ride, solo, on the Dolos last year. Meca! My friends don't know what's "the motorcycle heaven" on earth. So we plan explore it a litle (if the snow/ice will let us). Thanks, again! Abr., CP!
If you entered Switserland near Tirano you would have driven up to Sankt-Moritz over the Bernina pass. The Julier is north of Sankt-Moritzn heading to Tiefencastel and the Klosters-Davos valley. The Julier is amazing, especially the northen side of it. South of the top it's also a lot shorter as teh Engadin valley is at such a high elevation there.
When did they move it? :huh The Julier road heads west out of Silvaplana, which is SW of Sankt Moritz.
