today’s diet of passes consists of:
passo duran: 1605m
passo zoldo: 1430m
(keep in mind that today we are starting from much lower altitudes – 250-400m)
after a good nights’ sleep we wake up refreshed and are pleasantly surprised by the view from our room:
this promises to be a very nice day indeed! (naysayers: finally getting it? 🙂 )
we start our trip today with full batteries and can roll and recuperate at 98%-100% most of the first 30 kms. our route takes us away from the big roads and from little village to little village.
around us the towering dolomites and an extremely blue sky. picture perfect vistas.
we then climb towards passo duran – a fairly unknown but interesting pass – with 15-18% inclines.
at the top of passo duran, we stop at a very nice little place that offers us a coffee and chat about the TWIKE whilst warming up a little.
this being our last pass – we muse about how we really got used to going around corners with TW560 and how nice it would be to go straight for a change.
after that we slowly follow a river towards the end of the dolomites which then give way to the flatlands of northern italy.
and with no special point we could discern, suddenly everything was flat and no hills were to be seen.
TW560 then was in dire need of some electrons – we decided to stop at a car repair shop where our keen eyes had identified some red tri-phase cee plugs. within just 2 minutes we were charging and answering the usual questions about the twike.
we are really happy to both speak italian fluently! the people here are (as nearly everywhere) very, very friendly and helpful.
we then – by chance – entered a village and were absolutely amazed about the village centre – have a look for yourself!
otherwise we stick to our usual system of small roads with little traffic and are rewarded with a very relaxing drive.
then we reach our first goal of this year’s trip: the northernmost point of the mediterranean sea!
this is a good moment for a photo-opp; a bystander is quickly drafted to take some pictures.
and because the sun is perfect, why not shoot some pics of TW560 just on its own?
…never looked better 🙂
just before trieste, we have to charge again just to be sure to have some juice should we need to drive some kms more to our hotel (we haven’t booked anything yet for the night)
a camping site offers us to let us in and charge for “free” if we buy some drinks at the camping site bar. we certainly don’t have a problem with this proposal!
interestingly enough, even though the fuses were rated at 6A we could happily get 10A from each outlet – better not ask why!
we settle in for about 40 mins and take in the view of the coastline.
after charging we drive towards trieste – traffic is extremely civilized and very courteous towards us in the TWIKE.
we enter the city and drive around for a while whilst stirring up quite some interest. were we here a little earlier and less tired, we would set up the TWIKE in a central square and would easily spend the afternoon speaking to a crowd of interested people!
our hotel for the night is slightly outside trieste along the coast. we therefore decide that we will drive around istria counter-clockwise and see the coast before the interior.
the view from my balcony was stunning – check it out!
after taking in the view – we went out to an osteria and ordered some local specialities – jc meat, for me frutti di mare: mjam!
another very nice day on TDM2014 – we’re looking forward to our mini TDI(stria)2014 tomorrow! 🙂