Italy 2017 (#3)

Part 3: July 15th – 16th

By Watracz Is Traveling

Day 11: Milano, Cuorgnè, Nivolet Pass

July 15th, 2017

I wake up before 8, pack up my tent, and eat my breakfast at the campsite restaurant. I order 2 croissants, 3 panini for the road, and sometime around 9 a.m. I set off for the Alfa Romeo Museum in Milan.

Alfa Romeo Museum

The museum is located in the north-west part of Milan, in an old Alfa Romeo factory. The entrance is 12 euros. Waiting inside are 6 floors packed with over 250 cars and 150 engines manufactured by Alfa Romeo. To top it off, there are prototypes and race cars, too.

At the end of the tour, in one of the rooms there’s a 4D video projection. Going through the entire museum takes me over 2 hours.

Back at the museum’s parking lot, I have a sandwich, an apple, and head further west. I take the highway to get to Turin from Milan. As I leave the highway (and pay over 12 euros at the toll booth), I start to look around for a gas station — my fuel reserve light is on. The gas prices around here are suspiciously high, up to 1.95 euro per liter, but I eventually manage to find a slightly cheaper station and fill up there, paying “only” 1.49 euro per liter of unleaded fuel.

I turn north in Turin, and join a group of pretty fast bikers; together, we ride west, towards the mountains.

Lago di Ceresole

By the lake, I’m approached by a group of bikers from Italy; they ask if I can take a group photo of them. We talk for a while; only one of the girls can speak English, she asks me questions and then translates my answers to the rest of the group. In the end, we exchange contacts and head our separate ways.

Nivolet Pass

2,641 m.a.s.l.

The pass is just a few kilometers from the Italian-French border. On my way up, it’s terribly windy and cold. For the first time on this Italian trip, I turn on my heated grips. The pass was the setting for some of the scenes of The Italian Job (1969), including the final scene, where the bus carrying the protagonists hangs on the cliff edge.

Dam on Serrù Lake

2,275 m.a.s.l.

Agnel Lake

2,300 m.a.s.l.

There are two more lakes on the other side of the pass, and the Savoia shelter on the shore of one of them.

The road ends several hundred meters beyond the shelter, and I need to turn back.

On my way back, I come across a two motorcyclists who don’t know a lick of English, and yet try really hard to have a conversation with me. They show me a bunch of interesting roads and spots worth visiting, and show surprise to find that I came here by myself, from so far away.

The sun sets around 8 p.m., it gets even colder, so I ride down to find a place to stay. I stop at the Casa Bianca campsite next to Lago di Ceresole.

Day 12: Turin, Oulx

July 16th, 2017

Wake-up’s a bit later today, at 9 a.m. I keep wondering if I shouldn’t ride through the pass again, but in the end I decide to go back to Turin. I order two croissants, a cappuccino, and a few sandwiches for the road at the campsite restaurant. I pick up my batteries from the reception, pay for the night (12.5 euros), and set my GPS for the National Automobile Museum in Turin.

The bike’s built-in thermometer shows 38° C, and I’m almost baking in my suit while waiting in the line to the toll booths. It’s just as hot in Turin, and it’s hard to find even a scrap of shade, but I manage to park the bike under a tree, out of the sun.

National Automobile Museum

Entrance to the museum is 12 euros. You start the tour on the second floor, and pass through 20 rooms with various exhibits.

This museum is definitely aimed at younger audiences. I don’t really like the toys, kids’ games, multimedia stories, or robot figurines. Luckily there are just a few zones like that, and apart from this the museum is really nice and worth a visit.

There’s a video about the Fiat factory in Turin running in one of the rooms; the company built a track for testing new cars right on the roof of the factory. The next room houses Formula 1 cars parked in a row.

Going through all the exhibits takes about an hour and a half. In the museum cafe, I sip on a coffee, grab a sandwich and then ride further west.

On an approximately 100-km-long stretch of the highway, there are several toll booths, and I pay a total of about 20 euros — quite a lot. I reach the town of Oulx, exit the highway, do some shopping at the local mini mart, and decide to stay at the Gran Bosco campsite.

The campsite makes a great first impression because of how many bikers are there. The thing is, theirs are mostly off-road motorcycles, since there are a lot of nice gravel roads around. The owner takes a map and shows me spots he thinks I should visit, but he does say that my bike isn’t exactly right for those routes. We agree on 14 euros for my first night at the campsite, and 12 euros for each subsequent night.

In the evening, I meet my camping neighbors, do my laundry, enjoy a cold beer and sort my photos. Turns out I only have space left for about 500 on my 64GB card, so I’ll probably need to buy a new one once this one runs out of space. Before going to bed I re-pack my cases, as I’m getting ready for some off-roading tomorrow, so I want my bike to be as light as possible, with no unnecessary weight.