Thursday 11th August

An EARLY start. Was up not long after 6:30am and showered and dressed before jumping in one of the two cars heading to Monte Ritte on the Passa del Cibiana. Chiara had decided that three days in a row of doing something was too much so she chose to stop at home today. The journey there was split in two as we had to wait for Chiara's brother and his girlfriend to get ready. After nearly two hours we arrived in the car park for the mountain. A fair chunk of the journey I'd been reading my Jacques Anquetil book in the back of the car. Once there we found there was a shuttle service running and Chiara's Aunt and father took this option and the rest of us chose to walk up, planning it would take about 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

The view on the way up just got better and better and then we started coming across what looked like 'cow pats' but were actually 'yak pats'.  Messner is a famous climber who I'm told was the first person to climb the 8 mountains in the world over 4,000m.  At the top of Monte Rite he has somehow managed to get built a museum to climbing and particularly the Dolomites and he also brought some Yak here from Nepal.

Later to be found leaving the restaurant kitchen on a plate

From the top there are viewing platforms where you get a full 360 degree view of the mountains surrounding the museum or if the weather is good as it was today then you can just walk on top of the museum and check out the view.  Unluckily for some of the Yak the restaurant menu sports carpaccio di Yak and other delicacies.

Looking north to Cortina (I think)

Looking south

After checking out the museum we sat down for 45 minutes or so and had some lunch looking at the view you can see above. Cheese or meat panini followed by some fruit and washed down in my case with Nestea (lemon ice tea in this case). What a great place to sit and have lunch. Possibly even better than yesterday.

After waiting for the ladies and their long wait for the bathroom we headed down the hill. Again a couple of them would use the shuttle bus but I had decided to put some pace on and get down quickly. So off I trotted and just under an hour later (including I think 5 minutes standing by the shuttle stop) I'd made it to the start point. Georgio and Oscar were sat in the local bar so I joined them and had an espresso and probably the nicest cake I've had in Italy.

Steady descent

The journey home I was asleep for a fair amount of it in the back of the car although it was made slightly difficult by there being about 1,000 turns en-route.

Once back I had a chat with Alessio and Chiara about his recent travels to Australia. Needless to say his English is excellent (espeically given he's only 16) and his enthusiasm for the place and others he's been to on his travels is very strong, along with his enthusiasm for food. He's certainly got the interest to make a good chef.

Cena (dinner) was a quiche with fresh salad, mozzarella, boiled eggs followed by fruit and a coffee, delicious!

A bottle of Bombadier - how did that get there...?

A fair chunk of the evening has been spent catching up with photos and the blog but tomorrow I'm hoping to get out on the bike again (it's been a week!) and I might just have a wander down the valley and start warming up the legs again before an attack on Monte Grappa.