Day two: Drive to Bolzano Bozen

Yikes! What a drive! This evening I drove from Corvara to Bolzano Bozen – map it – driving directions (directions to be taken with a large pinch of salt…)

One of our group (there is always one!) couldn’t fly out on the Saturday and flew on the Sunday. Even though he had information on the ski shuttle bus transfer from the airport he decided to travel up to Bolzano Bozen by train and then phone through for a lift.

The train from Venice to Bolzano Bozen takes around 4 hours. I guessed the drive from Corvara to Bolzano Bozen would take around 90 minutes. Google put it down at 1 hour 45 minutes – driving directions (directions to be taken with a large pinch of salt…)

I left Corvara at 8 pm and the GPS said it was 29 miles (this is ‘as the crow flies’). When I asked at the hotel (Ciasa De Munt) I was told it was 65 km, however, when I was 10 km from Corvara I spotted a sign post that said it was 84 km, so 84 + 10 = 94, therefore it was quite a trek. I don’t know what happened, or where I went, but I did close to 130 km – I was basically guided by the car GPS system. The interesting thing about the drive is there is a large mountain in the way and I could essentially go clockwise or anti-clockwise around it to get to Bolzano Bozen.

I used a GPS unit for directions. The route was incredible. I have never been around so many hairpin turns. I also went over 2 mountain passes, one at 6850 ft and the other, the local pass to get in to Corvara, 6000 ft. Interestingly Bolzano Bozen is at 800 ft, so you get an idea why there are all the hairpins.

The drive to Bolzano Bozen took 2 hours, and the drive back, because the GPS sent me by some crazy route, took 2.5 hours.

This demonstrated, to me, that given a choice flying to Venice Airport and driving 200 km (120 miles), or Bolzano Dolomiti with the 100 km (60 miles) drive I would take Venice Airport as it was, in my opinion, an easier drive (see earlier post for details). However, I bet it would be a great drive during daylight, but at night, after a hard day of skiing, and with temperatures around -9°C it was hard work.

On the way back I noticed that they were blowing a lot of snow on mountains and that the piste bashers were out in force.

One piece of ‘weirdness’ on the trip was trying to deal with an Italian ’24 hour’ petrol station. Basically, they are not-manned. You drive up and are faced with a pump with three buttons, one for ?, one for 10 Euros and one for 20 Euros. There is also a sort of cash-point (ATM) machine with a slot for notes and a slot for cards. There is also a row of buttons with numbers that seem to match the numbers on the pumps… All very odd. After much fiddling I managed to get the pump to give me 10 Euros of fuel. I have no idea how! One comforting observation was an Italian at the petrol station also couldn’t get it to work!

Update (10th Feb 2007): We managed to get one of above mentioned pump systems working at Venice Airport (read the post).