The remainder of our first week in Italy was spent exploring and racing.
Friday morning we headed to Riva del Garda, a lovely lake just over the range from Rovereto. What a contrast!
From the lovely quaint and quiet back streets of Rovereto, to a mini tourist resort. Within 1k we had gone from being quite obviously the only tourists to being surrounded by German hikers and holiday makers. It was a bit of a welcome change to be easily understood by the locals but we quickly escaped up the hill to the Bastione.
There was talk of heading further up the hill to the Santa Barbara church but the turn off at the Bastione indicated another 2k with 500m climb. With a weekend of racing ahead of us we decided to call it a day.
We treated ourselves to a lunch in a little cafe, typical Italian time meant that we were left sitting for a good 45mins before any action happened as we told them we needed to leave in 10 minutes to catch our bus. Following our speed eating and a sprint through the back streets we headed back up to the mountains and friends!
Meeting up with Alex, Ness and Lachy was great to have a bit more company for a weekend of racing up around Asiago.
We were staying in a lovely big chalet building right up where the middle race was on the Saturday.
Asiago was just as I remembered it from 2009 albeit a lot colder, my well planned packing meant I was prepared though!
The races themselves were pretty average on my part but good to get some under the belt and remember that I'm not just here for a holiday. The addition of hail as I started the long distance was not so ideal but the delish pasta at the end made it all worthwhile.
Our last day in Italy was spent as tourists. After a much needed sleep at Alex's friend Giovanni's Dad's house (slightly convoluted) in Trento we headed down to Venice and walked and walked and walked. Such a magical city it never loses it's appeal.
With sore feet and feeling slightly argumentative post bag pick up (12 until 5pm is most definitely 5 hours, NOT 6 hours and definitely NOT 7 hours, 5 Italians at the train station still couldn't work it out) we headed to the airport.
Our initial plan was to sleep at the airport in Moss (just south of Oslo) as getting to accommodation and a bed for 6 hours was going to cost us at least $100nz each, Norway living up to it's hellishly expensive reputation. However as luck would have it we bumped into a group of orienteers from Halden who had been in Italy for the races.
They couldn't believe our plan and in typical orienteering fashion herded us back to Halden and a mattress on the floor, thanks Eva!
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