Day 6: Livigno

Day 6 · Livigno

Today’s ride was a short one from St. Moritz to Livigno, so I opted to go a little further down the Bernina Pass to do some of the ride that I had mapped out for yesterday. It was a lovely road, but I don’t feel like I needed to do it yesterday when I had the extra time to tackle it today.

Bernina was another gorgeous road with alpine views, shear mountaintops, hairpin curves, and receding glaciers.

I would say the highlight of today’s journey was spotting two vintage Italian sports cars on the road. I think it’s a 70s Lancia Stratos and an early 70s Ferrari Dino. Very cool cars out on a beautiful Sunday cruise.

I also crossed over into Italy, and the change in motorcycle behavior was INSTANT. Caution to the wind, more aggressive passing, and just a general vibe of impatience. Not quite the insanity of Spain, but I haven’t been through a city here yet. The Swiss riding was very polite – which I don’t think I mentioned.

Livigno is a small ski resort town, but since it’s summer the big draw seems to be all the duty free shops. There’s no taxes here, so the town seems somewhat like a picturesque alpine Las Americas outlet mall. My hotel is connected to a duty free perfume shop.

It’s also been another full language shift, so for the 3rd time in a week I’m grateful everyone seems to also know English because I would not have been able to learn French, German, and Italian to prepare for this trip (obviously, since I didn’t even try).

I got a recommendation for lunch from a guy working at the perfume shop (hotel? both? I suspect this is a family operation), but by the time I made it around the block I had forgotten the restaurant name and ended up stopping somewhere else (I assume). It was a very good, light pasta dish – but I was pretty sure I could do better for dinner.

For dinner I headed out to what appeared to be one of the fanciest places in town – which was pretty good. The risotto was served in a wine bottle, and they even changed out my fork rest for one made of a bottle neck to keep with the theme.

Tomorrow I’m up early to try and make it to Stelvio Pass before it’s both crowded, or possibly rainy. There’s some rain in the forecast for tomorrow afternoon, but I think if I can get up early and try to get back here before lunch I should get to enjoy a dry road (it’s only about 70 miles round trip). It’ll also be Monday so I’m hoping for lighter traffic than is showing on the map out there today – but again it’s a beautiful late summer day and the roads are crowded. My hotel is along the main drag and I heard bikes going by roughly every 10 seconds during my afternoon restful period.