Day 7: Stelvio Pass

Day 7 · Livigno

Early wake up (well…early enough to be the first one at the 8am hotel breakfast opening) and then I hit the road toward Stelvio pass. I was a little worried about the weather, as my phone was (and still is) showing a Yellow Warning for Thunderstorms, but my plan to get out and back on the early side meant that I had sunshine or partial clouds for a very pleasant ride.

Stelvio pass is…like motorcycle Disneyland frankly. I came in from the west, and the approach has all these little tunnels that left me feeling like I was in line for Splash Mountain (tunnel is at about 1:00 into the video below).

The roads were BUSY. Even at this early(ish) hour of 9:30am, there were oodles of bicycles, cars, shuttles, a tractor pulling a trailer full of cows (didn’t get that one on video, unfortunately), and TONS of motorcycles. I’m slowly getting better at these hairpin turns when I have the corner to myself, but as you see in the various videos – that’s not a given, nor particularly commonplace given the traffic on the road.

This side was shorter, greener, and less trafficked than the eastern side (the descent for me).

You can watch the full ride up this side here.

The top of the pass was a bit beyond this bit of switchbacks, and past a few photographers hanging out in corners with banners up of their websites. Once I got up to the top of the eastern side, there was a MASS of bikes (about 1:38 in the below video). I was a little overwhelmed and stopped further along where I could take a photo of what would be my descent of the mountain and have a protein bar.

You can watch the full ride down the east side here.

I had originally planned to come back up and hit the pass from the other side to return to Levigno, but as I got down to the foot of the eastern side the traffic was starting to become a problem. Buses were now in play, and every corner was turning into its own tiny traffic jam as larger vehicles negotiated passing one another in the widest spots available – the turns. You can see a fun example of this around 6:30 in this video.

Instead of heading back up through that mess, I decided to take the less exciting way back to Levigno, and I ended up on a lovely road that had very nice turns and more bikes and cars. It also had a toll tunnel back from Switzerland into Italy again (st some point I crossed the border) which was kinda wild. It was LONG, one way at a time, dark, and COLD. It went THROUGH the mountain, so the deeper in you went, the colder it got. In rewatching the video I did realize the darkness was probably more my sunglasses than the lighting. It drops you out at a lovely alpine lake, and a border crossing into Italy just a short jaunt up the road from my hotel. Who knew.

Car spotting was uneventful. Lots of Porsche and BMW represented, a few Aston Martins, a Lotus, and some sporty low slung dorky looking things that seem popular here but I’m unfamiliar with (possibly Caterhams/competitor vehicles? Just get a motorcycle, weirdos). But at this point in the trip these are all rote and familiar. Later in the day, I did spot a 944 which is pretty cool, but it was not a particularly nice specimen so I didn’t grab any footage of it. Instead I’ll leave you with the most famous 944 photo of all.

After I got back into town, I ate a whole pizza by myself and then walked along the meadow biking path here in town. And then wrote most of this in that restful afternoon period between lunch and dinner.

They are setting up in town for Levigno’s celebration of their patron saint tomorrow, so folks are busy today tossing streamers across from one building to another. I was initially thinking it was their Alpenfest (that’s when they parade all the cows through town wearing flowered headpieces to celebrate their return from pasture for the winter), which made me a little sad to miss it, but a festival for a saint is one I don’t need to stick around for. I’ll be headed out early for Merano – a valley town with palm trees and hot springs – and should miss the festival completely.

I’m hopeful I’ll happen across an Alpenfest at some point this month, I believe most larger towns have them on various days throughout September (Levigno’s is at the end of the month).

For dinner, I had something a little lighter after that entire pizza.

Just kidding. I ordered a salami tasting place (bold move for a solo diner) and a bowl of this very rich house-made gnocchi with a very strong cheese. For desert I got a strawberry granita, and the server insisted I have a glass of their house digestif – a mild nettle one. Also – the ringtone of the restaurant phone was La Grange. A haw haw haw. It was all very good, and now I have half of that salami plate to combine with an apple as lunch tomorrow.

Up early again tomorrow to try and get to Merano before the rain comes in!