Daphne's Drivel

 As we've been back home now for over a week, I just thought I'd wrap up this trip with a quick report on the last couple of days. Piran, Slovenia was a delightful place to unwind for our last couple of days. Our hotel was right in the heart of town on the main square with a view onto the Adriatic Sea. There were numerous restaurants and bars, many of which were along the sea-front, and a maze of little narrow streets that were really fun to wander through. A castle and tower on top of the hill overlooked the town, and the whole central area was completely traffic-free. Piran's harbour Catching up on my journal in Piran Narrow alleys Piran A very chilled cyclist Swimming here was great! Tartini Square, Piran is named after the composer who was born here Mr Tartini's statue The day before our flight home, we made the three-hour drive back towards Marco Polo Airport (near Venice) and stayed in a very convenient Agro-Turismo small guest house so we'd be near the airpor...

 Grado has ferry connections to a few other towns in Italy. Trieste is one of them. And bikes are allowed on this route, so we decided to take the one-and-a-half-hour excursion to explore a new city. We were also able to arrange a car rental from Trieste airport for a couple of days later. Our ferry from Grado to Trieste  Arriving by ferry to the very heart of Trieste - the Molo Audace pier next to the elegant Piazza Unita d'Italia Trieste's location in the very northeast corner of Italy Trieste is located on a narrow strip of land between the Adriatic and the Slovenian border. Of course like every European city, it has lots of history. Being a deep-water port, it has long been an important maritime gateway for Italy and surrounding countries, and has been fought over many times through the ages. But one thing I didn't know (shame on me) is that the great Irish literary figure James Joyce lived here for many years and in fact it was this city that inspired some of his writi...

 Whoever heard of Grado, Italy? We sure hadn't, that is until we learned about the Alps to Adriatic cycle route, which goes from Salzburg to Grado (or vice versa). It's a town of about 8000 residents set on an island in the Adriatic, about 100km east of Venice, joined to the mainland by a causeway. It used to be a quiet fishing village and has a characterful old town centre, but it's now a very popular tourist destination. Blue dot = Grado, the end of the road for us All along the Alps to Adriatic cycle trail, everyone we talked to was headed to Grado. If anyone looked lost on the road, locals would shout out "that way to Grado!" Frank and I arrived in Grado yesterday afternoon. We eagerly anticipated the first glimpse of the lagoon and then the causway that lead us to the town and the seafront, where we high-fived each other and sat down to have a quiet beer as we contemplated the past eight weeks on the road. We both feel delighted to have been able to complete ...

 Days 4-7 on the Alpes to Adriatic have offered a terrific variety of scenery and some of the best cycling infrastructure that we've seen on this whole trip. Temperatures were in the mid 30s from Sunday to yesterday. Today's cooler temperatures with lots of cloud cover was a welcome change. That was the temperature on Sunday at 7pm in the town  of Villach where we camped! I think pictures will speak louder than words here as the scenery has been magnificent. We thought we had reached the nicest possible point on Monday evening when we landed at our hotel outside the tiny village of Valbruna, just slightly off the main route, but the scenery continued to wow us the next day too. View from our guest house by the village of Valbruna, Italy Valbruna. Going up the road for dinner at a nearby restaurant. Notice I do sometimes change my clothes 😃 We crossed a into Italy on Monday afternoon through the old deserted border checkpoint. Immediately after that, the route uses a disused r...

 This cycle route has not disappointed! Three days in and we love it. Almost immediately after leaving Salzburg, we were surrounded by mountains, with lush, steeply sloping meadows dotted with farmhouses. The route was fairly flat on day one, but day 2 and 3 have had lots of climbs. And we've been so lucky with weather. We had heavy rain and wind during the night last night, but the days have been dry and sunny. The Salzaach River shortly after Salzburg Our new signage - the Ciclovoa one on the left is the route we'll be following until we reach the sea. We overlap with EV 7 for now but in Italy we will part ways.  Typical quiet cycle path Castle above the path  (we didn't visit it) Mountain views We were the only tenters in this quiet campground at St Johann on Thursday We had a very stiff climb up from the town you see in the distance (yesterday Friday) We rode through its 1.5 km long tunnel yesterday. Fortunately the cycle lane is separated from traffoc by a barrier, a...