Italy and Germany 2012: Stelvio Pass

Early start from Bolzano. Very pretty place with a huge German influence. All the road signs, menus and hotel instructions are in both Italian and German. We stayed at the Eggentallerstrasse Hotel and the German language was prominent. They have a very nice restaurant which serves great tuna.

On the road ……….. Pam had such a great time in the Alps yesterday she begged to drive over the Stelvio Pass. It is the highest paved mountain pass in the eastern Alps at 2675 metres. To put that in perspective – Mt Warning is 1100 metres. The road to the pass consists of 60 hairpin bends. The pass itself is 48 hairpin bends with grades of up to 20% (the Toowoomba range is 10%).

We drove north from Bolzano to Merano then set our sights west towards the top of Lake Como. Drove down the west coast of Lake Como and arrived at our B&B at about 5pm. A long day with a very testing drive.

As you can imagine Pam had a ball. She had several conversations with God and at least one (perhaps a shade more heated) conversation with me!!!! As I said yesterday – all’s wells that ends well…… We got to the top and there was a chairlift which could have taken us to 3500 metres. We decided there was enough snow on the ground without us getting mixed up with any more. No chair lift today.

This is a road which only opens for 4 months of the year (June to September), it is closed the rest of the year because of the excess snow. We had a coffee in one of the cafes at the summit; they had the wood fire going. The drive down the other side was a little easier and I was able to stop and take a few more photos.

Got pulled over by the traffic Police on the way home. I promise I wasn't doing ANYTHING wrong. We think it was a training exercise for a young trainee. Anyway, I had taken a few Qld Police patches with me, gave them a couple, I got one in return and we left great friends!!

The Lake Como drive was like driving a Formula 1 race with cars coming in the other direction. The road was, in many places, single lane and most Italians took ‘right of way’. Lucky I am almost Italian now and all the other drivers steered well clear of me……perhaps it was because I followed a 40 seater bus down the road and got sucked into its’ slip stream????

In any case…we arrived at Como, had a walk around the town centre and wharf area, planned our day for tomorrow, had a delicious tea of local fish. The owner of the restaurant also owned a winery and we had to taste a couple of the products. Got home too late after too many reds and started typing the blog…..make sense to you??