Italy day 3

Today we had our sights set for the Dolomites! Our plan was to 1) drive from Lecco (where Federico lives) to a lake called “Lago di Braies”, 2) Swim and eat a late lunch at the lake, 3) Make our way to our AirBnB near Sexten.

But then we had the car crash...

Driving on the highway is pretty crazy in Italy. It's not uncommon to see cars zipping past at 160 km/hr on 110km/hr highways. Italians are also very agressive drivers, and try and squeeze their way through intersections. It's what I imagine Indonesian drivers would do if there was no traffic. 

Where was I? Oh yeah, the car crash. We were driving along the highway, jamming to the Pokemon theme song, when John (the driver) turned to face me (the front passenger) for a split second to request that I change the song. In that moment we had rapidly approached a stationary car in front of us. By the time John managed to slam the breaks it was too late. We hit the back of a big white car (I don't know cars that well), which caused a minor dent for them, but completely buckled the front of our car. Everyone was completely fine - no injuries. To my surprise, the suited Italian guy that got out of the car was remarkably calm and understanding. He even appologised to us briefly for coming to a stop so suddently. We exchanged insurance details and went our separate ways. This completely destroyed every agressive and argumentative Italian steriotype that I had in my mind. 

Unfortuantely, the radiator in the front of our car was badly damaged and was causing our engine to overheat, so we had to go to a mechanic to get it repaired. We stopped in the nearest city called Verona. While the car was being repaired, we walked around town and got to see how beautiful it was. We lazily waddled around town eating gelato and sight seeing colloseums and the famous Romeo and Julliet balcony. 5 hours and 750 Euros later we were back in the car driving towards our AirBnB. 

When we arrived we wolfed down some pasta and went to bed. 

Random side story: Italian news had reported that a hiker had died climbing to the top of Mt Resegone - the exact same hike we were doing yesterday. Apparently he had slipped on the ridge near the summit and fell to his death 300m below. We saw a rescue helecopter yesterday - now we know why.