Cortina

Cortina is new ground for everyone. I've been in several Cortina's and owned a couple and it seems strange to be on the site of the shoot of a Bond movie - For Your Eyes only.

Now I need to find the website for the movie locations. I need to find the ski jump and bobsleigh run.

The first Pink Panther movie was shot here, I am walking in the footsteps of David Niven, Gina Lollabrigida and Peter Sellers! And also apparently Sly Stallone, but you couldn't pay me to watch Cliffhanger.

The 1965 Cortina though what a lovely car, two door, 1200cc OHV, front seats that were hinged at the front, with no locking mechanism, that tipped you closer to the steering wheel when you mashed the disc brakes.  It was my first car, Dad bought it from Neil Byrne, his colleague at the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union, and I remember the day we went to Nollamara to get and pay the $100 for it in 1985. Neil dove under the bonnet and bled the clutch to get the thing moving.

I learnt so much from that car. Loved it.

I was always a pragmatic car owner, choosing sensible over exciting. My next car was a two litre OHC 1973 Cortina. What an absolute pile of shit, rings gone I think I spent more cash on oil that fuel. Dad went guarantor on a loan for $2k for it and I did everything wrong from that moment. I paid the loan and didnt miss a payment, but I got another loan for another car and again and again. Dumb.

Never go into debt for a car. Rent, borrow, steal, or if you have to, buy outright, but never a loan, and never a loan that requires a family member to offer up body organs to the shark.

Last night's dinner was pleasant.

So we left Bormio today to travel to Cortina. A journey that required many hours of web search, mapping and frustration with the hills of northern Italy, those same hills we have come to climb.

In the end we knew that driving seven hours through Verona, Padua and nearly to Venice was madness, a huge loop to make the expressways, when we could just hop across the mountains and drive into Cortina fresh as a daisy.

The choices were:

1.  - Mortirolo - narrow, steep, incredibly windy and slow.
2.  - Gavia - narrow, steep, incredibly windy and slow.
3.  - Stelvio - not quite so narrow, steep, even more incredibly windy and slow.
4.  - Drive almost all the way to Lake Como, turn left and pay a shitload in expressway tolls and take eight hours and still have narrow, windy, steep roads at the end.

So naturally we took the Stelvio in the silver van and the white box.

I drove silver, BB the box

38 hairpins up, 48 hairpins down and I think we both agree that we would have preferred to have ridden the route again, despite the depths it sent us.

A couple of times it got cramped but we made it to the Nation of Prato for coffee and travel lollies and set off again into the heart of German speaking Italy. Lots of traffic for a Saturday

Merano. Bolzano. And an incredible interchange that saw us negotiate it with certainty and aplomb rarely seen by antipodean types. The GPS got us onto the SuperStrada to Innsbruck very easily. What a feat of engineering. I doubt we have a photo, but the highway up the Brenner Pass is totally amazing.

Stop for a snack, and driver change at a dogawful service station. SuperModel takes control, OGF shotgun in Silver, BB is doing a double shift in the Box. Off the freeway and into two lane valley roads choked with traffic (we are traffic). Everything is so green, and lush and it is no wonder the Austrians and Italians, and Napoleon fought over this chunk of wealth.

Sunken reefs of millions of years of sealife

Lunch is a bit bizarre for salty ham and water we roll on and the room is organised, the road is dominated on all sides by towering limestone, the countryside is full of hikers and mountain bikers and of course fat motorcyclists.

Then we are into Cortina d'Ampezzo. Hotels and chalets and cars and mountains and shops and more hotels. Stop and locate the house Via Roma 101. It's shut. But soon enough our greeter Christina is there to hand over keys, our host Alessandro is on holiday. Fifth and sixth floors of a chalet. Massive storage for our bikes. Warm and quiet and three minutes walk to the town.

But not fresh as a daisy. Driving here is remarkably sensible and grown-up. An average Australian (Perth) driver would be helpless, but immersion would make them a better driver. All of us were knackered.  Driving here takes incredible amounts of concentration. TV on Tour de France is on and some of us nap.

7pm and hunger knocks. Passegiatta uphill looking at all the shops that are shut, thankfully and many many wine bars that are open.

The Italians have no word for vibrant.

Beer in a bar, wine and food in a restaurant. Positive vibes about the place, except we didnt book so we are inside, and its too warm.
Lovely tasting food.

BB chose food and et it for our broken compadre - Frodo.

Sunday tomorrow. Dolomiti beckons. Buone notte cari amici.