Rain in Riva - June 29 - July 1

It's an almost daily occurrence, but that's just the icing on the cake. The problem with this place is Germans. Oh my god, they're everywhere. This town is ridiculously, get-me-out-of-here touristy. I hate it. To be fair, the location, nestled between the mountains at the top of the lake is pretty stunning, and it has great mountain biking and wind surfing apparently, but holy crap have the Germans ever taken this town over. There are probably a few other nationalities here as well, but it's tough to spot them. Every waiter speaks German, menus are in German, football is shown on the German TV channels, there's even a German sausage stand or two. While convenient, it's seriously annoying.

What's even more annoying is that the restaurants suck. It's nigh impossible to find good, basic Italian food. We jumped through all sorts of hoops and still mostly failed. Last night, we finally struck gold and had a happy experience. Venetian, not Trentino, but beggars can't be choosers. As an extra bonus, the waitress/owner barely spoke any English or German. Excellent!

That's not to say that we're not having fun. Tom and I are doing a lot of drinking (as usual), while Pauline does a lot of work (as usual) and goes to seminars, which is why we're here in the first place. We've also done some hiking and checking out surrounding towns, and Tom's been riding some passes on bicycle, while I took a ride down the lake and up through the cliffs on the motorbike yesterday.

One of the hiking highlights(?) was a climb up the mountain next to Riva to first the castello at 210m altitude and then the Santa Barbara chapel at 625m. Riva is at 65m above sea level. The path up is very rocky, rough and steep. Somewhere around 500m or so up, I had a moment of clarity, realizing that every further step up I took over the wet rocks (did I mention it was raining again?), I would have to somehow come back down. It was enough and I turned around. The two mountain goats, of course, carried on to the top.

The views were pretty nice though, as one might imagine. 

Tom and I explored Lago di Tenno, supposedly the clearest lake in Italy, but the torrential downpour the night before laid waste to that claim. Still, pretty nice.

Yesterday's ride was very neat. The west side of the lake is a mountain, so the shore road goes along a series of ledges and tunnels carved out of the rock. Truly astonishing. The road up the mountain takes you through a series of unlit tunnels, one of them 1km long and along very narrow ledges and blind turns, all carved out and most with overhangs. The two way road is basically one car width. Bike and car fit, but with two cars one would have to back up. The protocol is to honk around the blind turns and go very slowly. The payoff is the Hotel Paradiso in Pieve, which has a terrace cantilevered out into space, 300m over the lake. Cool!