Today, Thursday, started off with breakfast in the hotel dining room. Even more care was given here to Covid in that individual servings such as fruit and cheese were in covered dishes and wrapped plates, respectively. Eggs were available but had to be boiled first, otherwise we saw no hot food. This was okay as my new favorite breakfast was bread with honey, a piece of mild cheese, and fruit.

Afterwards, we went outside to the garden area for our route review. These were once detailed discussions of our written directions, but now mainly include a review of the map where we will be as well as highlights of the ride. During the review I discovered that the biking mirror that attached to my sunglasses was missing. So this meant a delay for me to start bicycling as I had to recheck our room and then search the grounds where we had been yesterday. All to no avail. I got through the ride using the mirror on the bike handlebars but luckily someone found my mirror and left it at the front desk later that day.

Today will be remembered by the long uphill. I estimated at least six miles. We started from the hotel repeating our departure yesterday through the piazza to the bike path along the Isarco River. Then the bike path started to open up with less traffic.

We passed by many apple orchards. The trees here are trained to grow straight and narrow in order to conserve space in this mountainous area and to be more open to sunshine.

We went past the Sigmundskron Castle, a mountain museum established by famed South Tyrolean mountaineer, Reinhold Messner, dedicated to mountain culture.

Messner has climbed Everest twice – the first to do it solo and the first to do it along with one other climber without supplemental oxygen – and was the first to ascend all 14 peaks more than 26,000 feet above sea level. It would have been nice to have been able to visit the museum. Next time. The photo below is him in 1985.

Then we started with a gentle uphill near the confluence of the Adige and Isarco Rivers. This was the start of a long ride up that culminated after ten miles at a winery.

We were grateful for the beautiful weather; the forecast for this area just prior to our arrival was for rain.

As we rode into the Kalterer Valley we began to see vineyards.

And as our incline increased, we saw a beautiful array of vineyards and orchards and mountains in the distance.

A couple of times in the ride, I had to get off my bike and walk. Certain gradients were fine, but there would be short sections where the path just rose too steeply for me and my THR. I listened to both Tina Turner and Bonnie Tyler for inspiration during this uphill. They alternately told me that I was “simply the best,” and that it was “nothing but a heartache.”

I frequently saw benches along the path upon which a bicyclist of my age might be resting and longed to do that myself. Just a ten-minute breather to hydrate would have been wonderful but I felt like we had to keep to a schedule. So on we went. I had to laugh about how we’d gone to Door County to specifically train for some “hill” riding for this trip.

Stefano rode sweep today and checked in on us from time to time. He would tell us to slow down and not feel like we had to race up the hill and that we always had more gears we could use. I just stared at him because at that point I had been through them all.

We kept seeing more Alpine apple orchards and for small little trees, they were loaded with apples.

We had several underpasses including one filled with graffiti. Some were longer and darker such as this one.

After ten miles, we reached the Kettmeir Winery. I was pretty fluffed at this point and had seen how wine was made many times so I was just looking for a place to sit.

Ross was impressed with the number of bottles in the winery. Their big sellers were their sparkling wines including champagne, and Pinot Grigio. We did have a tasting after the tour also.

Back to the bikes, we got ready to ride on to lunch.

From here we went another mile or so to Kalter for lunch and we were happy to have survived the morning uphill sludge.

We stopped in a small plaza with a few cafes and found a place for seven. Ross and I shared a pizza.

After lunch, the fun part started. This section was a great downhill, even had to use the brakes a bit. In the distance, Lake Caldero came into view.

Lake Caldero is supposedly the warmest bathing lake in the Alps because it’s so shallow.

After the downhill section, there was a right turn onto a mile section of narrow road with no traffic. This was flat, this was familiar.

At the end of this section was a stop sign that turned on to a really busy two-lane highway. Traffic was pretty constant along here. After a couple of miles, another left turn put us on a slightly smaller two-lane road that was also busy but mostly with smaller orchard and vineyard tractors towing wagons. This area was still thick with orchards. We had ridden eight miles since lunch and there were eleven more to ride into Bolzano but we were pooped and hot. Several of us elected to stop riding in Ora and caught the train into Bolzano.

Our train ride was about 15 to 20 minutes and the station was not far from our hotel. We walked on past the hotel to a popular gelato spot, then returned to the hotel to clean up.

Dinner was on our own and we went to a restaurant recommended by the hotel – Italia & Amore near the Piazza Walther.

Ross and Jerry had giant veal chops on tremendously heavy plates.

We took a photo of the church that we had ridden our bikes past the last two days. We knew we were riding by this church but in the daytime there were too many people and too much car and bicycle traffic to ever stop and take notice. Nice view for our final night in Bolzano. We went back to the hotel to pack up for our move to a different hotel tomorrow night.