after a very relaxing night at the casa mortarino, we’re seen off in person by the friendly owner wishing us all the best – this was by far the best stay we’ve had on our trip – should we be back to this part of italy anytime in the future, we’re certainly going to be calling there again! today, we cross the flatlands around the river po and more specifically the rice fields that give us the raw material for our beloved risotto. View TDM2014 (TW560) TWIKE in a larger map unsurprisingly, today, again, the pianura welcomes us with a […]
TDM2014 – Day 7, Nature’s forces & “la voglio!”
we had a night with awful weather – constant thunderstorms, heavy rain and extreme winds. meeting the owner of the hotel for check-out early next morning, he informs us that there will be some issues with leaving the region, since many roads are blocked due to landslides. there are 4 roads leading to the coast from santo stefano d’aveto – 3 of them are blocked. lucky us, that the small road we had planned on taking was the only one still open! furthermore, genova seems to have been hit worst – most of the city and surrounding communities are currently […]
TDM2014 – Day 6, Fog and a welcome change
toady, my entry is much shorter than usual… leaving our hotel today, we start out on the same flat roads we left yesterday… with one major difference: we see less than yesterday. this is our route for today: ostiglia to santo stefano d’aveto, in midst of the d’aveto nature reserve. View to the sea, sea and back (TW560) TWIKE in a larger map at about 0900 the fog gets denser by the minute until we have to slow down for saftey reasons. we drive from small town / village and only have one little highlight during the whole morning: we […]
TDM2014: Day5 – trieste to central italy
as every morning, we start out just before the sun rises – we want to get the most of the day. today, is the first of two days of driving across the width of italy. about two-thirds will be flat and then we will cross the apenin mountain region. View to the sea, sea and back (TW560) TWIKE in a larger map a disclaimer: as a child, i was fortunate enough to have lived in italy for about three years. this is why i speak fluent italian and have had a soft spot for this country since. i have many […]
TDM2014 – Day 4, Istria: TWIKE to the MAX!
our trip today is filed under TDM2014 *and* one-day-trip. we start in trieste and circumvent the istrian pensinsula and arrive back in triest. we have three learnings for today. 1. croatia/istria is extremely nice; there will be another TDM/TDI(stria) 2. the tour we did today is one of the most diverse you can have with a TWIKE in one day (more about this below) 3. ads with pictures of croatian coastlines that look unreal and photoshopped are *NOT* photoshopped and unreal: what you see is what you get! note: this will be a long entry! note2: if you get the […]
TDM2014: Day3, Dolomites and our first objective accomplished
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 […]
TDM2014: Day2, up and down – all day long
today, we have many, many passes to cross: (and are looking forward to it!) Umbrail: 2573 Stelvio: 2780 Nigerpass: 1774 Karerpass: 1745 Passo di San Pellegrino: 1918 this is our route for today: View to the sea, sea and back (TW560) TWIKE in a larger map the day starts grey but dry. with a fully charged twike and our hotel just metres away from the start of the umbrail pass, we start our ascent with virtually 100% in our batteries. the umbrail pass is very, very steep. the pictures cannot really convey the challenge TW560 went through. after just 20 […]
TDM2014: Day1 – to the end of switzerland
finally: we’re on our way! it’s been a long time we’ve already planned this trip and been talking about it. after getting employed again, i felt it in order to resurrect the plan and during the few weeks before i start working to get TW560 the R&R it deserves 🙂 as usual, jc arrives at around 0620 and we load all our stuff into the TWIKE. although everyone around me was convinced that our first driving day would be grey and rainy, i told everyone to shut up and believe in the sun. well…as we started out, it was dark […]
TDM2014, 8-9 days around the mediteranean
we’re happy to announce another one of our longer TWIKE aventures. the goal this year is to visit the three northernmost points of the mediterranean sea (this quest takes us all the way to croatia, crossing the width of italy to genoa and back to switzerland. (blue lines)) – this is why we call this challenge “Tour De (la) Mediterranée” as usual, we are going to try to stick to the blue lines as closely as possible and see what happens. since this map is somewhat more complex than the usual ones, google can no longer display all waypoints in […]
one day trip, part2: exploring beautiful switzerland
since the blog entry for the first part of the day was getting quite long, i’ve added this second entry for reading convenience. we take up the action after having very nice lunch at the silwängi alp hut and are on our way down to the schönisei valley. arriving at schönisei, tw560’s battery is fully charged at 414V and ready to take us over 3 passes in one charge! (about 6000 metres of altitude delta in total) at the top of glaubenberg-pass (a very narrow street where busses and trucks have to take 30-min turns, since they cannot cross) a […]