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Category: Italy

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When the weather was said to be bad again for the weekend in Germany we decided to book the night train to Florence.

The train runs every night from Munich to Rome. It was another great night on the train, at 6 in the morning we arrived in Florence. After a short walk along the river Arno we took the next train to Vicchio. Apart from staying at the city we wanted to see a bit of the real Tuscany. During the train ride we saw the great landscape. For one night we booked a very nicely looking hotel called Villa Campestri Olive Oil Resort. It is about 5km away from the train station in Vicchio. Actually you can take a taxi to go up to the hotel, but it was such a nice day, therefore we decided to walk. After more than one hour we arrived at the hotel. The hotel is situated on a hill which gives you a beautiful view down to the valley. Moreover the hotel is surrounded by olive trees. Every autumn there is the olive harvest and oil is produced. During your stay you will have the opportunity to try the homemade olive oil. Also the food served in the enclosed restaurant can be recommended.

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PS: One nice blog entry regarding traveling: http://www.villacampestri.com/en/blog_en?p=4738#more-4738

Published on Leave a comment on Alpine Crossing GPS Tracks

During our alpine crossing from St. Gingolph to Menton we recorded parts of our track with a Garmin etrex GPS receiver. Unfortunately we sometimes didn't have enough batteries with us. So we don't have tracks for the whole tour. Still, what we have is available as a set of .gpx files below. There are several ways to view .gpx files. Under linux you may use viking in combination with open street map. As far as I know google maps is also able to display .gpx files. We provide those files hoping that they are helpful to others. But of course using the data is on your own risk.

tour_map
This map shows our tour and indicates where we recorded GPS tracks.

GPS  .zip   .tar.gz.

Published on Leave a comment on Alpine Crossing 2013 – Day 42: Rifugio Soria-Ellena – Refuge de Nice

Today we walked as planned from Rif. Ellena-Soria to Ref. Nice in France. After about 2 hours we reached the first pass which is the border between Italy and France. Up there is an old building – probably from the war. When we arrived there three ibexes just left the building – like guardians :) – but they let us continue our way to France… Unfortunately this also means that there won’t be any pasta as “primi plati” any more :( I have to say…it is just pasta…BUT the Italian pasta is absolutely fantastic – I don’t know what they are doing different… :)

From here we walked down to the first hut on our way – Refuge Madone de Fenestre on about 1900m. Here we met quite a lot of people because many came up to this hut by car – and since it is Sunday…

We made no break and continued to the next pass on about 2700m. This path was very nice – a little steep and some more rocks made it quite interesting. At the top it was quite cold since clouds were already hanging around. So we directly continued downwards again. The “path” down was quite steep at the beginning and our knees started to hurt. We were quite glad when we finally arrived at the Nice hut. One thing we both started to wonder about in the Alps Maritime are the times written on the way signs. Because it now happened quite often that we were much slower than the time written on the signs. I wonder how fast one must walk to make the time given…. :P – flying??

At the hut it was not so nice – it was quite cold inside and the sun also left us quite early today. The dinner was ok – just sitting so close with 4 others on a small table was little annoying (actually no problem but after so many days and nights we both are looking for some more room and privacy again).