September  6, 1997 - Saturday 

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Fume Alto Adige.  The river Alto Adige runs up and down the valley through the Alps from way up north down to Verona and possibly beyond. Along the entire length of the river is a walkway set up for bicyclists, joggers and walkers.   The walkway is well paved and fortunately there is an entrance to the walk way from Gardolo.  Me and my friend Tom headed out today to walk down to Trento along the river.  It is a long walk, and took us about 2 hours altogether.  Along the way you get a magnificent view of the Alto Adige and the mountains that it has run through for the past centuries.  The river runs very swiftly at this point.  It looks like it'd be a fun kayaking spot.  Although it is probably too fast for tubing.

As we walked we passed several people on bicycles.  Some of the bikers were competition bikers and whizzed by very fast.  But mostly we saw people that were leisurely making their way either up or down stream.

I don't know if you can see them in this photo but there are caves in the mountains side.  The photo on the left has one about one quarter of the way in from the right in the middle of the photo. Tom and I are not sure what the caves are for.  Perhaps they are remnants of World War II or perhaps some very old wine cellars that people used to use.  At any rate, it looks like it'd be tough getting into and out of one of these caves.  The terain is rough and there is no obvious walk way up.  Although we were on the wrong side of the river to really get a good look ourselves.

Our walk ended up not far from the local Irish pub in town! Unfortunately, they don't open until 17h30 so we were a bit early.  But I wanted to show Tom where the pub was so he would be able to find it himself later.  As we were standing there examining the menu, one of the bartenders, Conner, showed up on his bike. He asked if we wanted to have a beer and we both responded a hearty yes!  He led us over to a bar which Tom wanted to take me to anyhow.  They serve a local Italian beer (Martelli?) that is very nice.  We sat there at our outdoor table, near the piazza Duomo watching the world walk by as we drank our beers and had good conversation.  Then one girl walked by that Conner recognized and he called out to her.  Kat, from Sydney Australia, sat down at our table and said she had time for just one beer.  As we all talked and watched even more of the world walk by, another one of the bartenders, Mark, and his girlfriend Fredrica were walking by.  Conner called out to them and they sat down for a drink.  So pretty quickly we went from being just a couple of guys walking down along the river to a small entourage at an Italian sidewalk bar.

We all talked and joked for the longest time.  Then Kat had to move on to do some shopping.  Tom also wanted to buy a reading lamp so the three of us bid adieu and went to run our various errands.

Tom bought his lamp and we headed back to the apt complex.  We agreed we'd meet up around 20h to head down to the pub later tonight.

I showered and changed into some clean clothes.  Vincenzo came by and said I'd be going out to dinner with them later.  I told him to meet me at the bar.

He brought some black and white photos he had taken of Kristie eating gelato up in the mountains on one of our trips.  He gave those to me.  We ended up eating pizza at a restaurant and I didn't spend any time at the pub.  But it was fun and good company.

I got home around midnight and fell promptly asleep.

Copyright @ 1997,  Alexandre POLOZOFF.  All Rights Reserved.