Hungary to Romenia

Last night I stayed at "the City of peace" nothing special, just another city, some old buildings, the most of them falling apart and a lot of tall apartment buildings surrounding the old town. 

By the way I didn't mentioned it before but the streets of Slovakia are full of police officers with laser radars and nobody warns you about them. I tried to always have a car in front of me to serve as cruise control and it worked so far.

Tipical house in east Slovakia

 

Today I drove through Hungary into Roménia, the roads in Hungary are the worse I had in this trip. 

 

 

 

 Endless roads in Hungary

I haven't seen one of these things for ages. For those of you that may not know what it is, in portuguese is called "picota" (didn't find any translation) and it is an arabic invention to get water out of a well.

I thought that this kind of ballon was tipical for Slovakia but they exist also in Hungary

Romenia

 

Slovakia

Just got into Slovakia, tried to buy the sticker for the highway but a guy standing there claimed it's not necessary "- bikes free in Slovakia!" I still don't know if it's true or not but I'm not planning to stop by the police and ask :)

Anyway some new experiences today, in the place I decided to stop for lunch everybody spoke only slovak and the menu was not translated either I was starving and decided that it was not a good condition for experiences so I ordered the only thing on the menu that I thought I knew what it was :) grécky šalát.

Shortly after lunch I got into a rain shower, something very special, at the beginning I though that it would rain for a couple of kilometers but in the end it only lasted for around 2 or 3 hundert meters, really strange. 

 

Spissky hrad, someone claims it is the biggest in middle Europe but I've my dought's that the person payed enough attention at the geography class.

 

Awesome Passo di Vivione

I saw this twisty road on the map that I don't remember to have ridden before and decided to have a go. What a good surprise, it is a very challenging and demanding road, with an amazing landscape well worth the effort of doing it.

 

and then continued to the Gavia Pass

Driving around Torino

Not many pictures today, spent the day mostly away from the regular 90° driving position. Drove the SP197 over the Col del Lys, excellent! a must if someone happens to be near, don't miss it. 

Stopped in Monza to meet with an old friend that I haven't seen for years and strolled around the city center.

Still too early

Yeap! That's right! It's still too early to do some nice roads, after Petit San Bernard I wanted to drive the Col Col de l'Iseran but it was closed so I tried what it seam to be a nice alternative around but it had a dead end. Then I saw the Col de la Madeleine and guess what short after I got on the right road there was a sign saying 'fermé' but as I saw a sign with the name of place I've heard a lot o people talking about, I drove further and here is it. Everyone talks about it BUT I was there! :)

Even though it was supposed to be closed, I went to take a closer look and after all it was open, only one of the roads down was closed.

Today I decided to drive the Col Galibier but this one was realy closed, both Col and tunel, on the way back I got a deviation due to the Punta Bagna Valloire, took a look at the GPS and it looked good so I went for it.

 Driving over the clouds at Col du Mont Cenis.

 

Down the Alps

it looks like blogspot messed around with the colors on my last post :/ 

I found another splendid place stay, very calm, far from almost every turist at an Agri-Turismo near Argegno. They have a restaurant where they cook their own production.

 

On my last post I mentioned that I could think about more than 10 roads better than Stiefelserjoch and one of them is the Colle San Marco, if're in the surroundings try it and I garantee you'll not regret it.

There is still quite some snow at Petit San Bernard.

Further south I found a new way to pay for your bread.

Yesterday I spent the night near Imst on a restored monastery  that is now a backpackers hostel, if anyone needs a room in the surroundings I strongly recommend it, despite the roads surrounding it.

 

 

The day started out pretty well, until I've found out that I forgot my cell phone in the room and needed to turn around to pick it up, well, at least it was still there when arrived :)

 

I left Austria to Switzerland and then got into Italy driving over the Passo di Resia 

 

 

 

... and then climbing the Passo di Stelvio. The last time I tried to do this one it was closed. The Stelvio is considered one of the 10 roads you should drive in life but I must say that I can think of a lot more than 10 Passos in Italy that I would prefer to this one, the views are OK and yes it is one of the highest driveable road's BUT it definitely won't get into my top 10, sorry.

Then I drove all the way down to lago di como and crossed it to Ménage à trois, uh! Sorry it's Menaggio :)