"I can't believe Google maps works in Italy!"
I just looked outside the passenger window and prayed that it actually did work.
"Turn here."
Getting there was easy. We both marveled at how the Italians figured that driving 100 kph on a windy country road with ditches on either side was a good idea.
This is Lake Fimon:
It was quite picturesque. We saw, across the lake, the biggest swan I have ever seen. I've been chased by swans before. This one was even bigger than that one.
Then we ventured onward. I noticed that the directions I had gotten told us to go back where we came from, but I didn't like the idea of backtracking. I had seen there was a road that went clear around the lake, and this is what we decided to find. So we started up this side road for about half a mile.
I'm super amazed at how lush it became. It reminded me of Hawaii.
Then the road got steeper and narrower, then finally, there was a sign that said "private driveway." So we had to manuvuer a 300 point u-turn on this road. There was no way we were going any father than the "attenti al cani" sign.
We finally got turned around and found a little side road into a corn field.
"oh THIS must be the road that goes all the way around!" After we passed a tractor that looked like this:
the road turned into a hiking trail/river bed. Fortunately we had the balls to just drive onto the private roadway intersecting with the trail and made it around the lake.
(Those grape and olive harvesters are totally trippy to come across on the road. They are super tall)
Then we ventured into the Berici Hills above the lake.
The Berici hills are awesome! I didn't know we lived so close to something so wild and romantic. I thought that finding something cool would be at least an hours drive from home. I'm really starting to get sick of corn fields. Kill me if I ever move to Kansas.
Here's the view, in the general direction of home, from the top of the hills:
I TOLD YOU!!! CORN! CORN! Nothing but CORN.
By the way, fresh rains have turned the usual AM horse shit smell into something far worse.
So then we follow the map down this road, which turns into another hiking trail. But we've gone so far and come so close to home, we don't turn around. There was a sign, after all, that said "public access" from April to October. So we drove down this white rock hiking/biking trail to the bottom of the hills. It took us about 20 minutes to traverse maybe.
It was wide enough for a car all the way down, but we didn't know that starting out. Talk about relief when we realized we had reached the bottom!!
"Do you see what I see?"
"OMG! Yes!"
"This is the place we got lost on our first drive in Italy. We turned around at this road because it dead-ended into a driveway. It's not a driveway! It's a drivable hiking path!"
"awesome."
This is a little Google Maps look of the trail:
And, yay. That's it. It was fun...sort of. I mean, it was fun once we realized it was over. Kinda like the whole "hahaha remember when we watched that horror movie by ourselves at night and got scared, that was fun" kind of way.
Lesson Learned: What looks like a road, and may very well be included in your directions, may not actually be a real "road."
