Day eight: Corvara –> Venice –> Heathrow
The drive back from Corvara to Venice was uneventful. It was a great drive and we really got to appreciate the mountains (first drive through the area in daylight). You are surprisingly high up in the Dolomites and the roads and the small Italian villages make it an interesting and challenging drive.
The trip from Corvara to Venice is about 200 km (~120 miles), and took us just under 3 hours. The first 100 km (~60 miles) was on windy mountain roads and now that I have driven them in daylight I can confirm that they are some of the windiest mountain roads I have ever driven on. It took around 2 hours to complete the first 100 km (60 miles).
The second 100 km (~60 miles) was on a very good and fast motor-way and took about an hour. The road had one toll of 4.50 Euros. A very easy drive.
When we reached the airport we needed to refuel the cars. Now, Italy has some of the weirdest ’24 hour’ petrol stations I have ever seen (see earlier post on my drive to Bolzano Bozen). Basically these stations 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… The one at the airport had a set of instructions in English. To get the system to work you put some money in the slot (we couldn’t work out how to use a credit card!), push the button that corresponds to the pump, run back to the car, and pump the fuel. One problem with this is that you can only do multiple of 10 Euros and we ended up with about 8 Euros still in the pump. What a rip-off.
Venice airport was OK. Typical airport. Dropped off the car (Hertz were very slow again), checked in, went through security, found a table and had lunch. Flight OK. Back in the UK 20 mins early, but as there was nowhere to ‘park the plane’ at Heathrow, so we ended up being 30 mins late getting to the terminal.
Welcome back to the UK – after 6 days of sunshine in Corvara, it is grey, dull and rainy in London.
Corvara in Badia, Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy – theSnowSite Entry – map it – Google Earth kml file
