European HOG Rally - 2

Crossing back into Germany, I had chosen a hilly route through ski resorts, including a lunch stop in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and a prolonged descent back into Austria to Innsbruck.  The fresh air, smell of timber once more, the views, and the periodic chill on the fingers at higher altitudes were especially memorable.  I had booked a city centre hotel to be able to walk about and found it much as remembered from my first and only other visit in 1983, very pretty architecture with lots of al fresco facilities, plus the fast flowing green glacial water of the river.  I was lucky to make it back to the hotel just before a seriously heavy thunder storm came through, but it had thankfully gone by the next morning.

Climbing steeply out of Innsbruck and heading south, I was reminded constantly of my elevation relative to a train line and a motorway, which were either hundreds of metres above or below me at various points.  High in the hills, I passed into Italy, heading for Cortina d'Ampezzo, most notable as the set for the Pink Panther film starring David Niven, albeit in winter, and claimed to be the supermodel of ski resorts - "fashionable, pricey, icy, and undeniably beautiful".  I was looking forward to a stop and look around there, but found the road to the centre blocked by police and eventually deduced that some sort of local bicycle race was taking place.  I had to backtrack and detour 60km around it to my next stop at Pieve de Cadore.  However, the detour added a bonus of more stunning scenery among snow capped mountains that I would otherwise have missed.  Cadore means mountain community and there are a number of them in the area set on hills overlooking lakes, at the top end of the Dolomites.

I didn't think I could be further impressed with scenery, but found the Dolomites and its Natural Park achieved just that.  The mountains are craggier than in other parts of the Alps, somehow distinct in look, and some valleys tended to ravines, with the mountains soaring up either side.  After an initial steep climb with the temperature dropping to the low teens, it was then a long slow decline, winding through the hills and small townships, to the rather more arid northeast corner of Italy, temperatures up to the low 30s, eventually to the town of Gorizia, right on the Slovenia border.  It's a curious place with a convoluted history of Slovenian origin, but has wide open streets in the centre, some interesting architecture, and very good ice cream!  It has a mishmash of common languages - German, Slovenian, Friulian, Italian and Venetian, all allegedly in use today and symptomatic of its past.