Tuesday, September 22, 2009—Belluno, Italy

We have reached the point in our trip where we need to slow down. Our flight back to Ireland will take off Friday evening, which means we have four days to get to the airport. But the Marco Polo International Airport (Venice) is only around 100 miles away, which should not take four days. So today we stopped after only 24 miles at Belluno, a pleasant but rather ordinary city and capital of the Dolomite area of northern Italy.

To use the word grandeur to describe the Dolomites is perhaps using a cliché, but it is an apt one. The roads follow deep valleys cut through massive mountains which tower over the rivers and roads below. The valleys end, of course, and when they do there is a pass to climb to get to the next valley—which means first a climb then a downhill run. The mountain slopes are steep and peaked, often consisting of bare rock which glistens in the morning or evening sunlight.

The short ride from Cimolais began with an uphill pull over a steep rise then a wonderful ride down the other side, past several small villages and one massive dam and reservoir. When the road reached the town of Longarone it turned south and changed from a beautiful rugged rural road to a heavily traveled main artery. And because of the character of the topography it was necessary to take that road almost all the way to our stopping point—a rather anticlimactic end to a remarkably beautiful day.