July 1st: Merano Rest Day

 We ate our breakfast, put our swimsuits and towels into our backpack, and then walked over to the Merano Therme, where they told us that we qualified for the family rate, which was cheaper than the 2 or 3 hour ticket we had planned to buy. We walked in, changed, and got swimming.

The Merano pool has multiple different pools of varying temperatures. The highlight for us, however, was the outdoor 'natural' pool, which instead of chlorination, used a series of gravel "natural" sand filters to clean the water. The result was that you could swim in the water without goggles but your eyes still wouldn't sting.

The air was clear and even the sun came out, making us question the wisdom of taking a zero day, but then I remembered that we'd just done a century the day before and wouldn't have much oomph left for climbing anyway.

We switched between the various pools and even tried the sauna for a bit. When we were ready to leave we went back to the natural pool one more time. This time, however, Boen lost his watch in the pool! With a pair of goggles finding it wouldn't be a problem, but neither and Arturo had one. Arturo ran off to try to borrow a pair. A few other kind folks joined in the search in vain. Thunder pealed, and I worried that the pool would close before Arturo came back, but the pool managers at Merano were made out of stern stuff and the pool stayed open. As predicted, once Arturo came back with a pair of goggles he'd borrowed from a lifeguard, he found the watch in minutes, sitting far from where we thought he'd dropped it.

We finished a couple of laps and then left the pool, going to our favorite tapas place for a bruschetta lunch, which I thoroughly enjoyed. We then walked over to the Merano train station and were assured that the train did ran and would indeed take bikes, but had special bike cars at 9:45am. Arturo once again tried to get our bus tickets refunded but was directed elsewhere.

I'd gotten fed up with the light on my Amazon basics USB-C charger keeping me up at night, so while Arturo went to try to get the bus tickets refunded I walked into the bike shop to try to get some black tape. We used that to tape various lights on the various chargers so that the blinking wouldn't keep us up at night.

The rain resumed as we made dinner, did laundry using the washing machine, and took showers. We went to sleep hoping everything would dry despite the humidity, and hoping for a good day tomorrow.