Hello my fellow Steemians

As promised, here is the record of our cycle tour through Italy.

On this first day we were getting up at 5 am to cycle through the slowly awakening Munich to the Central Station.
We wanted to skip the whole uphill cycling part in our crossing of the Alps and booked two tickets for us and our bikes on the train to the Brenner, which is the highest point and also the border between Austria and Italy. Only three hours by train and we would arrive at 10am ready to start our tour.
Sadly the ticket machine wouldn’t print our prepaid tickets and the ticket counters weren’t open yet.
Luckily our super chill and helpful conductor printed us an exemption statement and with that we boarded the train.
Too much stress so early in the morning, so instead of getting some more needed sleep, the adrenaline rush kept us awake.

As the mountains got bigger during the train ride so did our excitement and finally we reached the Brenner and got into the saddle to start our tour.

The cycle track was easy to find after following the signs and after 5 kilometres riding close to the road and traffic it turned away along an old railway line towards the south.

The cycle track runs from the Brenner to Bolzano through mountainous terrain.
Most of the time you ride at the bottom of the valley with the steep hills on both sides.

In some passages the valley is very narrow which means that the cycle path, the road, the highway, the train tracks and the river all have to squeeze through side by side. Sometimes your track even runs below the highway. It’s not all picture perfect Italy, there is noisy and dirty industries too along our way and you cycle past the back of some dodgy factories.

Where the valley widens though, it’s just you, the river, the fruit trees and the cicadas and that’s beautiful.

On the top of the hills you can see medieval watchtowers and fortresses that used to guard the trade routes to and from Rome.

We are pretty tired and the 55 km to Brixen take all our energy. It’s mostly downhill but with some short steep passages in between.

We’re glad when we arrive and find a hotel in the village centre, we shower and go out for dinner and when we come back we’re even too tired to try the outdoor heated pool but instead just fall into our beds.

See you tomorrow, geenaizzy out!