TDE2017 – Day2: One blue sky

After sleeping fitfully with the window wide open at -1C and us breathing lots of very fresh air, we are greeted with a magnificent view from our hotel balcony:

 
Some healthy breakfast options later, we leave our hotel and check our overnight charging station.

 
It’s this cozy EV feeling that when you get to your car it is fully charged that makes you like starting your trip 🙂

 
With us pulling around 13kWh throughout the night, we’re at a charge rate that requires a second thought regarding the plug-type to choose, especially if we’re working with consumer-grade adaptors.

With prior experience to back it up (molten piece of plastic 🙂 ) – I know that the smaller Italian plug converters are not able to handle more than 6A continuously for more than an hour or so. This is why I had to create this Frankenstein of plug-combo for tonight: CH 10A -> DE 10A (13A) -> IT 13A (16A)… a plug threesome for the night 😀

 
The battery is at a very cold 3C and driving up passo di Foscagno, the voltage plunges around 20V under load. We keep the roof on, since the air is still very cold. As soon we emerge into the sun, however, our cabin heats up to acceptable levels within minutes.

Driving ever higher up to the 2280m of Passo Foscagno, we can see that this will be another incredible day.

 
This is the third time TW560 arrives up here within 2 years!

 
The views are mindblowingly beautiful. We could just stay here and take them in all day long (which, incidentally, is what we will be actually doing all day *grin*)

 
We descend slowly and recuperate at low rates, as we want to get as much energy back into the batteries without overshooting the voltage limiter.

 
As every time I’m in Italy, we stop at the first small and local bar for ‘Italian Gold’. Such a treat at 1€!

 

We’re back on the road after just 10 mins – feeling very much at home.

 
For the rest of the day, we continue along small windy roads – below are some pictures of these awesome roads:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
The last descent towards Trento proved to be the best of them all:

 
This road with its dozens of hairpin bends and beautiful views of the Trento valley was a real treat.

We made two videos of the same stretch of road – once from the roadside and once from within the TWIKE. You’ll see why we loved this stretch of road this much!

A little further down there was a perfect place to take a mediterranean picture of TW560:

 
We arrived at our hotel for the night and checked-in after making sure that TW560 was able to charge.

The millennial travelling with me had only one question: Dad… The Wi-Fi landing page is asking me weird stuff, may I accept the terms? … decide for yourself. I for my part thought: NO. But nothing forbids me not to accept these terms and still press “CONTINUE”.

Doing so however brought up the rectangle at the bottom which made me chuckle… you know *hehe*

 
My interest piqued, I read through their GTC’s and found all the wrongness and technical maliciousness possible: cookie re-writing, ad-injection, forced page overlays, DNS catching and much more.

Luckily, using a disposable email address and a VPN back to our home in Switzerland got rid of all this nastiness.

After some relaxing in the room, we head to a restaurant that was suggested to us by some locals. High above the valley, La Roccia (with its own boulder, hence the name), is a very local affair. We arrive to immediately stir the interest of some workers enjoying their after-work beer on the terrace.

 
The terrace has a very nice view. Let’s hope the food is similarly good 🙂

 
It was! Fresh pasta with fresh asparagus – I’m in heaven and never want this plate to finish!

 
We get back to our hotel, very satisfied and ready for a good nights’ sleep.

Looking forward to our drive to Venice tomorrow!