In this episode: We take three days and travel from Bormio to Italy to Antibes France on the French Riviera! After stopping in Menaggio for a snack we pass thru Como and head into Varese for the night. The next day has us stopping in Turin. Heading up over the Colle dela Lombarde into France and the beautiful Cote d’Azur region, we work our way down the mountain into Nice and then stay in Antibes for a couple of days.
0:00 Intro
0:54 Map
2:33 Como Lake Tunnels
3:45 Menaggio
5:20 Varese
5:45 Turin
7:00 Trip Tip
7:54 Into France
10:40 Nice and Antibes
@weridemotoz5551
Welcome back this is WeRideMotoz and my name is Glen. And I’m Carrie. Okay in this episode we are going to leave Bormio where we stayed last night after we finished the Stelvio Pass the day before and we’re going to head down to, ultimately, Antibes France.
It’s going to cover three days this episode uh but this uh this first part we’re going to go to Varese, which is in Italy, which isn’t too far away. It was a bit of a rainy. It wasn’t a bit of a rainy day it was pouring!
It did it rained a lot we finally hit I don’t even know where it was we just saw a little town. I was cold and we were wet and it was. We saw um we were looking for a coffee the little villages we could not find
One so finally we saw a mall it’s like let’s just go in there and. If nothing else we were going to get out of the rain. I mean we wear uh vented gear over there and we have rain jackets light ones that fit underneath so weren’t wet yeah but it was cold.
And it’s just kind of yucky and rain so anyways we sat at this table probably for a good hour and a half. Yeah we had a big pond underneath us when we left. Yeah yeah dripping all over the place. So by
The time we’ve we’re done there the rain had lifted and off we head out. It was still a little bit cloudy and rained on and off as we. So the interesting thing is that we wanted to we wanted to the west side of Como Lake
Because we we’ve been over, uh not on the fully east side, but from from Como the town or city, we went north to Belaggio, and it was nice it was a cool little run along the side of the
Lake it was you know you couldn’t go fast but it was fun and view and we kind of thought hey, you know, we’ll go down the west side maybe we’ll see, what’s that actor that everybody? George Clooney! He lives around there somewhere but he made a no show but
Uh you know for the most part it was just a bunch of tunnels it (lots of tunnels) tunnel after tunnel after tunnel which today when it was pouring rain was nice but you know. Not much of a view. Kind of boring.
And you had to get off often right in the tunnel was the way to get off to go into the town so you took another merged out of the tunnel into another tunnel. Ya you don’t have any visual clues or cues other than there’s a sign saying turn off
Sometimes it’s in the middle of the tunnel sometimes it’s right at the end of the tunnel And I think the little town we were headed for, we actually missed it, so we had to turn around once we got out of the tunnel and then go back.
Yeah I think we did a couple detours. We wanted to warm up have lunch get another coffee so we turned off into this little town called Menaggio (probably saying it wrong) but anyway it’s across the lake from Belaggio. So we rolled into town and uh as we always do appreciate the motorcycle
Parking which is very convenient 99% of the time. Right right in right of the lake and was great perfect perfect spot it was great yeah we got off parked the bike got off toured around a little bit it’s uh I think it’s lavender
Harvesting it must be lavender harving it must be lavender harvesting season because they’ve got. I think July early July and August. So so we’re just catching the end of it. Yeah they have all the products that they make out of that yeah
Yeah so we walked around a little bit sat down got a bite to eat and then jumped on the bike and we thought we’d avoid the highways took some of the the roads through town but of course it’s a lot slower because you know it’s you’re going through town either on
The highway in the tunnels or slow in the town so we we kind of did both yeah did it Quick run around Como. We didn’t go into Como just took the highway around it and
Then ended up in Varese for no particular reason I think it was just the town we picked yeah on on route we’re on we’re actually moving on our way into Spain to meet with some friends which
Would be happening in a couple episodes I think we’ll we’ll hook up with them so yeah we just uh toured around and then it was our one of our favorite parts about Italy. It’s aperitivo time! That’s right. Yeah you can’t beat it.
Going to be leaving Italy so we have to make sure and. Yeah go to Italy figure out aperitivos because they’re a good deal. get our last few in. Day two of the 3-day ride we’re leaving Varese to Turin and this is a really short ride it’s like I know 50 60 km.
I don’t I don’t know why we didn’t even do it yesterday it makes no sense (I’m not sure) but anyway we didn’t. Maybe we were cold and wet and just called it quits. Yeah I don’t remember. I don’t remember so that’s like like months ago. Anyway,
So we got into got into town toured around um parked the bike. Turin was an interesting city. It had lots of public squares like you just walked from one to the other and they were all so busy people about and I don’t know if it was the weekend.
I was trying the odd phone call. I think I phoned my parents. I think you’re trying to talk to your mom. Somebody’s got the Bongos going and they’re on super loud mode Yeah they knew had to have a good time there so it was it was an interesting uh city.
Uh we had underground parking in this one that we had to pay for we couldn’t get any parking near the near where we parked the bike uh I think I parked it earlier in in a cramped little spot but here’s a tip trip a trip tip maybe by the time the series is
Over I’ll be to say that uh I parked the bike in the parkade left it sitting there. It was all great and later like a few hours later I’m like couldn’t find my keys went all the way out down the street into the underground parkade and every
Vehicle that got in this parkade passed our bike and guess where my keys were sitting! On the seat of the bike. It could have become an instant hiking holiday. Yeah that’s right backpacking. Yeah that was kind of a dumb move.
Anyway toured around Turin, saw a few sites and once again aperitivo time. Yeah that’s right. Ok, today we’re leaving Turin and going to Antibes. We’re going to be crossing over the border into France today. Um we don’t like taking the main highways so I don’t like to pay tolls
No because we were being um frugal we got a route that avoided all the tolls and all the highways and it took us on a very interesting road today we weren’t hadn’t planned it and it just kind of worked out but man it was.
Yeah so if you want a good drive it’s called in Italy it’s SP 255 it’s considered one of the dangerous roads probably because it’s basically one lane wide up the side of a mountain (on the Italy side) grades that go between 7 and 14% and uh yeah but it’s a fun little ride
Yeah it took us up into the mountains it was a very unique kind of landscape up there. When you hit the summit eventually it’s called the uh I’m going to hope I get this Colle della Lombarda (something like that you know me in pronunciation)
But there’s a big statue up there (the goat? Was it a goat?) Some kind of animal. Yeah I couldn’t find any information out about it I could find anything and and even there’s what I can only assume to be old military structures up there I couldn’t
Really find anything about it so if you know anything throw it in the comments and Be interested to know. Add it in somehow but but really nice ride. The Italian side was one lane, the French side was a little nicer, it was it was a little wider so it wasn’t quite as sketchy.
Went down into a ski hill right away on the French side so then they had going out of the ski hill they had really better road. It was a nice road going out. And as we dropped in elevation it got warmer and warmer so when we finally rolled into Nice,
Which is on the French Riviera, busy as you would expect it to be. It’s nice and warm. Yep we didn’t stop we we’d been to Nice years and years ago so we just rolled through.
Got to Antibes and then it was pretty late we got in. I think we just had a snack went to bed. Yeah. And then the next day we hiked around town and took a few sites. Yeah it was it was nice being on the coast, they it was a port a port town
So they had some very nice yachts (oh yeah some there’s some money there) yeah definitely Yeah they have a big fort there that’s star- shaped but I don’t know, for whatever reason, we have no photos of it other than the one oh yeah
It was closed so we couldn’t go in it but we did walk around it. Yep. Well I’m going to say we had aperitivo time but it’s not Italy so it’s not aperitivo time but whatever they call in France. We found a great little sushi restaurant. It was very good spectacular sushi.
That was very good highlight of the day. Yeah and uh so that’s that’s the end of this episode. Tomorrow we are going up into lavender country. We are, and the Verdon Gorge we’re going to see and then I’m going to find a nice
Little little pop town stop for lunch so (cool) that’s what’ll be doing tomorrow. See you tomorrow!