Bolzano-A Quick Detour turned into a wonderful afternoon
Our beloved tent (Hilleberg Nallo 3 GT) is a muddy mess. We do love our home away from home, so it deserves a bit of TLC before we head out. It isn't sunny this morning as promised, but it is not raining - and that feels like a victory. To our surprise, the Eurospar supermarket was open - and this is Sunday. I guess that this is another custom of Italy that we are learning. This was good as we were able to stock up on some staples for the next few days. It is such a relief to have a half empty trailer (since we mailed things back to Germany) as we can carry extra food if needed. We are learning that it is not always easy to buy provisions outside of cities.
Bolzano sounds interesting so we decided to take the short 4 km detour into the city to check it out. We had packed a picnic lunch and thought we would sit in the city square, ride around briefly and then head out again.
Well, to our surprise, when we rounded the corner from the trail to Walter Square, we couldn't believe the spectacle. Bolzano was buzzing with a special annual festival to honour the historic centre of the city. Everybody was out enjoying the festival: food tents, entertainment, carousel rides for children.... We could hardly get through with our bike. Food from every region was represented, including German, sub Tyrol, etc. Of all days to have packed a lunch. The streets of the inner city were completely taken over by performance stages and food areas and the music corresponded to the type of food. We even found a blues funk band. Italian people continue to enthusiastically welcome us to their country. We had wonderful encounters with locals who continue to talk to us in rapid Italian despite our complete incomprehension. We kind of get the gist of it, we think. Some riders call out Bravo as we ride past, and other simply call out and wave. The warmth we feel is very special. There are only 2 campsites between Bolzano and Verona and they are only 30 km from Bolzano. We had planned to go further, but the time we spent in Bolzano make Auer/Ora an ideal place to stop. Camping Markushof once again offers 4 star amenities, but it also gives us a dedicated pitch for our tent with lots of space and views of apple orchards and the Dolomites. We feel like we have found an ideal place.
We found a Eurospar near our campground and to our surprise it is open on Sunday - We have much to learn about the customs of Italy and our travels in Europe have taught us that these stores are usually closed Sundays.
An Italian family were very perplexed why I was taking a photo of Barry by a sign when the beautiful mountains are behind the sign. They insisted that they take a picture of the two of us and we were happy to accept. We and the family had a lot of laughs about our strange ways.
We saw big plates covered with this dessert - deep fried with fruit sauce and dusted with icing sugar. It looked so good but we didn't indulge. Can't remember its name.
We were surprised to discover that these cookies (lemon, of course!) that my mom loves are made here in Bolzano at the place where we got our ice cream cones.
The woman at reception had kindly offered us site 72 which had grass as most of the others had more dirt (like the next one) and were muddy from the recent rains.
