June 29th: Arabba to Misurina

 The breakfast table was filled with pastries and sweets, as well as preserved fruits of all sorts. I ate as much as I could. I remembered Tre Croci as being a pass much easier than the 12% grade signs along it declared, but this would be my first time tackling it on a tandem and climbs that are no big deal on a single bike frequently turn into intense torturefests on the tandem. 

The descent down into Caprile and the following climb up Falzerago, however, was a delight. That's because two years ago, I was riding a triplet, and even with luggage, the tandem was far easier to handle and pedal. Once again, lots of cyclists were on the road, with folks passing us taking pictures or saying encouraging things like "Gut Vater." 

At a water fountain, we took on water and a follow vehicle for what looked like a club tour stopped to speak to Arturo in Italian. It turned out that they were doing much the same route was we were, only riding over Cima Bianche to Misurina instead of Tre Croci. I asked Arturo to see if they'd drop our luggage off at our hotel for us, but he resisted. "I want the full experience," he explained. "Try riding this on a tandem and tell me what the full experience is about." I retorted. "Good point." 

We rode through the final set of galleries and ended up at Passo Falzerago. "Hey, it keeps going up past here!" Arturo said. "Yeah, but we're going to Cortina. Passo Valpora is 100m up, but we have plenty more climbing today." We spotted the club van again and this time Arturo made an effort to ask if they'd take our luggage for us to the hotel, but they demurred, either not understanding what we were requesting, or didn't want to take on the responsibility for our luggage. 

Passo Falzerago was even more of a zoo than Passo Pordoi, and as we descended, we were stuck behind a couple of tour buses. At an opportune moment we overtook one, then the other, and finally had a clear highway in front of us. At full speed, a bicycle is more than capable of keeping up with auto traffic, and it wasn't until the intersection with Passo Giau that the two buses caught up and then passed us. 

The descent into Cortina d'Ampezzo is impressive and pretty as usual, but this time there was a lot of traffic, and the classic overlook of the city was full of motorcyclists so we declined to stop there and proceeded down to the city. There was a ton of traffic and half the city was blocked off. Arturo spotted a UMTB tent and realized that there was an ultra-marathon event going on. "That would explain why Cortina was so expensive!" We got instructions from a passer-by about where to get a supermarket and when we got there, we bought some fruits and then proceeded to try to get out of Cortina as quickly as possible, the town being hot and the outside of the supermarket being busy with traffic to the point of annoyance. 

Riding out without buying water was a mistake, however, as unlike other alpine towns, there was not a single roadside water fountain to be seen in Cortina as we headed up Tre Croci. The road was steep and the sun relentless to the point where when I finally rode by a house with an open door I stopped the bike, poked my head in, and asked the woman of the house if we could have our bottles refilled. She assented and we gratefully gave her our water bottles. She had to come back when she couldn't figure out how to open the Camelbak Podium bottles, but the water bottles were filled. 

We went around the corner and ate the rest of the food that Arturo had bought at the supermarket. By the time we were ready to go again, clouds had appeared, and the temperature cooled enough so that the ride no longer looked like it was going to be a torturefest. 

There was multiple 12% grade warning signs all the way up the climb, but my bike computer never showed anything steeper than 9%. Despite that, by the time with got to the ski lifts/gondola station we were ready for a long break. We took a break and ate quite abit of our emergency food though we were wary of long delays so did not order any food at the sit-down restaurant. The views were remarkable. 

Once we got back onto our bikes it was only a short climb to the summit of Tre Croci. "Garmin says there's 100m of additional climbing to Misurina." "In that case we should keep our cycling caps on." Indeed, the road did descend, but gently until the intersection with the road from Federavecchia whereupon it became climbing again, but never at as steep a grade as Tre Croci was.  

A hard push and we were over the lip onto Misurina, where the lake and the surrounding hotels loomed large. We took a few pictures and rode all the way up to the hotel, which was in the process of closing up lunch service. The hotel owner asked one of the staff to show us our apartment, and not only did he do so, but he also single handedly lifted the tandem up the staircase to the designated parking spot right outside our room! 

The view from the hotel room was nothing short of remarkable and I was impressed. We decided to immediately take a walk around the lake before it rained. I'd always wanted to walk around the lake, especially in the crystal-clear calm mornings where we had frequently visited Misurina before.

There was a zipline playground where Boen did a couple of runs, and then he suddenly started to feel sick! "Oh yeah," Arturo said. "I'd felt quite sick before in the morning on the climb. But it went away after I drank a lot of water." Fortunately, I'd brought my water bottle on the hike and after Boen downed most of it he felt a lot better. 

We speculated about what it could be, as we'd all had the same thing for breakfast, and the only difference between us dinner last night was that I didn't have soup, which was unlikely to cause food poisoning. 

The walk around the lake was beautiful, and we finished at the supermarket where we bought pastries. When we were done, we also bought supplemental breakfast --- the hotel had warned us that breakfast was simply bread, instant coffee and tea. Apparently, when they served a full breakfast, their guests were packing parts of it into to-go bags and turning it into picnic lunches, so this was their way of enforcing quotas for guests. We bought instant noodles so we could have a hot breakfast. 

As we ate our pastries, we heard a group of hikers chatting --- they were in the area for 6 days of hiking, and said they had a great time. On the way back to our room we stopped at the restaurant and asked for a dinner reservation. 

After we got back to the room, we took a shower, did laundry, and stretched. The wind had gotten stronger, and it looked like it would rain overnight. Looking at the forecast, it looked like we'll have a good day tomorrow, but the next day looked horrible, and Grossglockner looked out of the question, with lots of rain and snow. That ruled out riding to Lienz, so our best bet was to ride over to Bolzano and Merano. The full ride would be 100 miles, but we could take the train from Bolzano to Merano which would save 20 miles. We decided that Merano was a good place to wait out the storm. Suite Seven wasn't available, so Arturo found a different apartment in the area (booking.com now hosts apartments) and booked it for 2 nights. 

Dinner was impressive. We were seated, the staff took our orders and came back with the food within 15 minutes. The steak was impressively good and everyone enjoyed their meals. When we were done, the bill was delivered, and we paid. We'd gotten in and out of the restaurant in under 45 minutes! "Just for that," Arturo said, "I'd review the hotel as 5 stars!" 

We got back to our room as the weather had turned sour and enjoyed the view from our room before turning in. The only sour note was getting awakened at 1am by a group who had decided to go hiking (loudly) in the middle of the night.