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X-Alp 2024 to Grado. Day 8: The End

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Corso Italia, Trieste (OSM)

Trieste certainly is Italy’s number one city of coffee, so for me it was almost paradise… The bike trip coming from Grado was unspectacular but unexpectedly dangerous: Cyclists on main roads are – as in most places – second class citizens. We had avoided such roads on the biggest part of our trip, but on…

X-Alp 2024 to Grado. Day 7

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Lungomare Nazario Sauro, Grado (OSM)

Finally, the Mediterranean Sea! The plan was, that our bicycle trip would end here and we go by boat to Trieste to return by train back home. But the best laid plans… It turned out that the ferry boat had almost sunk in June this year and was not operating any more. Means that we…

X-Alp 2024 to Grado. Day 6

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Gemona del Friuli, Italy, (OSM)

The wettest day of our adventure started with an inconspicuous drizzle in the morning, which slowly increased to a thunderstorm when passing through Udine, desperately trying to follow the routing indication on smartphone and Garmin watch. By the time we reached Palmanova, we were thorougly wet. But when we had showered, changed into dry clothes,…

X-Alp 2024 to Grado. Day 5

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Tagliamento Valley, Italy, (OSM)

The day started with fair weather and a soft downhill bikepath on a former railway line, including many tunnels and underpasses to cross the highway – most of the time far away enough not to molest us with the ceaseless noise of cars and trucks. For coffee drinkers like me, Italy comes next to Paradise…

X-Alp 2024 to Grado. Day 4

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Bike Garage, Hotel Hacienda Mexicana, Spittal a.d. Drau (OSM)

On day 4 the weather was fine once again as we had proceeded far enough to the South, reaching the Italian border in the evening. Thanks to the Schengen treaty, nobody bothered with border control in any form. The morning had begun with fetching the bikes from the hotel’s bike garage, matchingly equipped with a…

X-Alp 2024 to Grado. Day 3 Rest

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Wasserfallweg, Bad Gastein (OSM)

Writing WordPress-posts with the iphone proved to be overly difficult due to the small screen – and admittedly in the evening I was simply too tired to spend a lot of time with it after several hours of cycling. The third day started rainy, with a walk through Bad Gastein as we were scheduled for…