Water in the air
We arrived in Limone Sul Garda late last night. The drive down from Bruneck was a bit longer than we had expected, and we didn’t really pay too much attention to our last-minute booked hotel, other than for the fact it was just a little difficult to find. The town seems to consist entirely of hotels, and we had some frantic searching in the dark before we pulled into the anonymous driveway surrounded by olive trees. We went to sleep in the slightly damp room and looked forward to waking up to a beautiful bright morning. The sleep was good, but unfortunately the weather had different ideas; the surface of the lake boiled as rain drops forced their entry into the water, and the swimming pool that held so much potential last night now looked cold and uninviting in the grey morning light.
The relationship of the British with the weather is sometimes misunderstood. Its not that I love the rain, because I don’t. But I also don’t hate it, and there is no way that a little bit of moisture is going to stop me from enjoying myself. I take great pleasure from asking other people whether they are soluble! Its with this mind-set that I underestimated the effect of rain on my sun loving Colorado bread girlfriend. To make matters worse, the hotel had mistakenly left the coffee heating for the last 16 years, and we left breakfast severely under-caffeinated. We drove over to the beautiful lakeside town of Riva del Garda and positioned ourselves on the waterfront with two cups of much better coffee, then watched the predominantly German tourists navigate the wet streets in various interpretations of waterproof clothing.
With the sun finally fighting off the clouds, we got on the bikes and improved the day vastly. With a couple thunderclouds shadowing us, we cruised down the lake. Christa’s knee was still feeling sore, so she decided to take it easy, and gave me a free reign to blast up a couple little climbs through the olive groves of Arco. The roads and trails go off in every direction, and I soon found a dirt road to take me up to a vantage point. Although a little more relaxed than our grand ideas of putting in huge miles in the sunshine, it was a great first day by the water, and slowed the pace of the holiday; less worrying about where we were going, and a lot more actual doing.
