Wine, Italian food and beautiful landscapes (and biker roads)

This year motorbike vacation started in Oslo on the Oslo-Kiel ferry - rather crowded as there was a large group of Germans 'going home' after a long cruise to Nordkapp.
After cruising, on scenic country roads from Kiel to Hamburg, the day after, we loaded the bikes on the excellent DB AutoZug. The train is very popular, not only among bikers, but also by car travellers who wants to avoid the 'boring' autobahn through Germany.

Once the bikes where loaded, we entered our two-bed cabin with our own bathroom including a shower - really ingenious on how they have been able to fit a bathroom with a toilet and shower on such a small space, but there you go, the cabin even had a working air-condition - which we soon discovered we would need when we entered the south side of the alps where the temperature was above 30 degrees - every day!

On arrival in Verona we tanked and drove towards Modena - we had a lovely hotel in a lovely town:









From Modena we drove over the Appenins, was surprised by a heavy rainfall, but arrived outside Florence in sunshine and enjoyed the scenic Chianti Classic wine road (S222) all the way to Castellina in Chianti.
In Castellina we stayed a few days, enjoying the lovely hotel in the center of this lovely small (wine)town. Everyday we also enjoyed the beautiful view from our window - including early morning wildlife.

Next stop was Montalcino - famous for its Brunello wines and the fantastic view over the wine-areas below - we also took the opportunity to visit one of the many hot springs for a bath on the road between Montalcino and Montepulcano.








After Montalcino we drove north in Tuscany again and reached Puccini's Lucca late the same day in a very hot 35 degrees with silk-soft night air and a very enjoyable small town.










After lovely Lucca, we went back to Verona through Parma (one night to taste the best ever Parma ham, Parmesan and wine). In Verona we had the pleasure of enjoying Madama Butterfly in the famous nearly 2000 year old outdoor Arena at the center of Verona.

After Verona we drove further north to our 'little secret', the beautiful little Sud-Tirol town of Merano where there are very few tourists, majestic surrounding Alps and top service from the hotel in the center of the town - the road to Merano includes also some of the best motorbike roads in Italy with perfect curves and breathtaking views of high mountains as well as plains down below - and if you add perfect weather one can easily understand that this is one of my favourite:









This last flower-picture is the view from our hotel-room. After Merano, the last leg was to Bozano where the bikes once again was loaded onto the AutoZug and we returned back to Oslo via Hamburg and Kiel with many good memories of beautiful Italy, great motorbiking and good food and wine!