Last night in Rimini we walked down the main drag to find a place to eat. This really is Surfer's Paradise Italian style - in the worst possible way. Most of the eateries think that the only Italian food that turisti will have heard of is Pasta or Pizza. Interestingly, most of the notices in the restaurants and tourist-trash shops are in four languages: Italian (of course), English, German, and Russian (using the Cyrillic alphabet).
Garth had spotted a likely looking restaurant on the way in (I was driving) so we walked down a few blocks and found it. It turned out to be a very good choice. I had a first course of Mussels and a bowl of about 40 turned up and very nicely cooked. Garth had a seafood dish of crumbed seafood and that was good too (we shared a bit). My main was a mixed fish dish while Garth had King Prawn skewers and calimari and both were delicious. Why so much fish? Because, being on the coast, we reckoned that Pesce di Mare (sea fish) should be good, and it was.
We walked back along the beach road sneering at the beach concessions but it was quite a pleasant evening to walk back to the hotel. The beach road has cycle ways in each direction as well as a footpath - sheer luxury after Florence and the narrow streeted towns and villages of Tuscany.
Today, since we had a lot of distance to cover if we were to catch a stage of the Giro d'Italia, we used the Autostradas all the way from Rimini, through/around Bologna and Modena, until we got close to Brescia where we planned to continue along the western side of Lago di Garda. We exited the Autostrada system at Peschiera to head westwards along the bottom of the lake before turning north towards Salo. Once at Salo we were able to turn onto the road leading to the head of the lake at Riva di Garda.
After Salo, the road alongside the lake clings to the hillside and is quite twisty. Much of the way in the early part is lined with Hotels but later on, the cliffs dropping to the lake become more sheer and the road goes through many tunnels. At Riva di Garda I needed a comfort stop so we found a likely looking place which turned up to be anything but having only a Coop and a couple of other businesses. As we were walking around trying to see if a 'loo could be found Garth spotted a bag on a seat under a tree. It turned out to contain an expensive looking Olympus camera so someone must have forgotten to pick it up after sitting there. Garth took it into the Coop while I continued to search for a toilet, eventually finding one by asking in a snack shop. After doing the necessary we had a toasted sandwich style thing made with a very thin bread. We had it done with cheese and prosciutto, washing it down with a caffe latte, and it was just enough for a light middayish meal.
From Riva di Garda we continued up the valley towards Trento before looping around Trento to take the road to Padova where we hoped to turn off at Levico Terme to catch stage 18 of the Giro. The early exits into Levico Trento were blocked off by the Carabinieri but there was an exit on the other side of the town which wasn't blocked off so we took that. After driving through and around blocked off streets we eventually found a (probably illegal) park for the car and walked back to where it was obvious that the race would be coming through. We walked up the steep cobbled hill in the centre of the town where it was obvious from the number of expectant people that the race would be coming and found a spot about 3/4 of the way up where we could wait. We got there at about 3:30pm and the Testa da Corsa group came through at about 4:10pm followed closely by a larger second group and then a third group. There were a few stragglers at the back. Obviously the mountains had taken a toll. Looking at some of the footage on TV later we could see where they had ridden through cool cloudy and wet weather and also with snow on the sides of the road. Anyway, it was good to have since the race live, having watched so much of it on the box.
Once the race was out of the way it was back to the car and back to Trento with Karen navigating us to our Hotel. As usual, we missed a few of her planned turns and had to take the alternate routes she had to plan but eventually got to the hotel just after 5pm.
The day was fine but very hazy as we drove north and dark clouds threatened from the north west. The mountain tops were clouded over but cleared as we continued and it wasn't long before we could see the craggy tops with their pockets of permanent snow. The mountain scenery in the north is really very spectacular and driving up alongside Lago di Garda made the most of it. As we got close to Riva di Garda there was a lot of activity on the water with wind surfers, para-surfers, and dinghies all busy out on the water. We did get a little shower of rain at one stage while driving but it eventually went away. All in all, a very good day
