Bellaigo to Castelrotto

It's Wednesday night, September 19th and we are writing from Castelrotto in the Dolminites, which is in northern Italy in the Italian Alps.

Shelley and Jerry arrived to Belliago on Monday afternoon in a semi crippled car.  It did fine on the flat roads but not so good on the hills.  Anyway, they made it and we enjoyed a beautiful sunny, warm afternoon and evening. The only mishap was that Bob got stung by a VERY large bee and had a terrible reaction which took 2 days to get better.  He's good now.

 Lake Como is breathtaking.  The mountains jut up out of the water with villages dotting the shoreline.  We didn't expect it to be so beautiful.  It would be nice to spend more time there exploring but it was time to move on Tuesday morning.  We expected a 3 hour drive to Castelrotto through the mountains but it soon became apparent that the car would not accelerate and definitely not up hill which caused huge problems with the Italian drivers!  It also caused tremendous stress to Bob and Jerry who had to take turns driving this very unsafe vehicle.  After 4 hours of driving we got to Verona to exchange the car and after a total of 9 hours we finally made it to Castelrotto.  The good news is we love it here.  It feels and looks like Austria and German is the primary language which is good since Shelley speaks it well.  The area looks like it's part of the "Sound of Music" movie and the landscape is full of chalets, meadows and flower boxes in full bloom everywhere.  This area is know for its hiking and skiing and we plan to do a 12 mile hike tomorrow if the weather allows.  It was raining today but we did see the sunset so we are hopeful.  If we survive the hike we'll post again soon.

Bellagio

Bob's bee sting

Hotel in Castelrotto

Flowers everywhere