Day 5

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'We woke up at sunrise, which was about 7 or 8 AM, and Radu went to get some breakfast from the neighborhood bakery. He brought us croissants á lá Italiana, and that means filled with Nutella. "This is not a croissant" he commented. The subject matter expert. I wouldn't know. I would only eat a croissant if it was filled with meat.

We packed our stuff in a hurry and left heading for Aosta. It started to get very hot, very quick, but now at least I was happy I was in leathers, at least they got soft in the heat.


What we thought was going to be a couple of hours of driving became a painful village-to-village and to the next village at 50-60 km/h.

By noon we stopped for a bite to eat, at the local coffe shop, and got ourselves a foccaccia sandwich with a perfect double espresso and a large beer. Excelent! After charging our batteries, we got back into our hot, freshly sun-dried riding gear, and headed on. At some point we took a mountain road towards the border city of Domodossola, and what a marvellous ride! No police, no threats of hidden cameras, just go as fast as you can. Which by the way isn't very fast, the road is tight, and the hairpins slow you down a lot. We stopped at Sanctuario D'Oropa, built in like 1100, and had some water from the fountain in the center of the sanctuary.

 It was BIG. It's a must see if you're down there ..
At the sanctuary we found out that we had gone too far and had to go back. After some more nice mountain roads, I started to get tired, had back and neck pains, and fell behind, so we decided to stop for a moments rest at a mountain café in Valle Sessera,  a beautiful place, with a french speaking owner, and perfect coffee.

We saw the weather was getting a bit cloudy so we headed to Domodossola as fast as we could and by the time we got there we were convinced that camping is out of the question for the evening. Luckily we found a motel, and got down to business: eating and drinking.



























And later, for the others, some of this:

And that's about what we did next day too. With the exception of having some REAL italian pizza. I had a special, with pig fat (Lardo for the connaiseurs).
The rain was amazing. It just poured like it was the apocalypse, for two days.

We decided that two nights in the same hotel was enough, so we had to go regardless of the weather next day. I bought a pair of rain pants, so I was prepared.
At checkout, it turned out that the famous Italian lack of technology was everpresent. The credit card terminal was dead "because there were a lot of transactions yesterday" , according to the receptionist, who spoke nothing else than italian. I was forced to take a ride in his car, dressed in full race leathers, in Italian summer weather , to find an ATM, in order to pay our bill.
Going to Italy ? bring cash ..