A good motorcycle tour should include one, two, or even more rest days for the riders to take a break from intense days on the road, depending on the trip’s length. Instead of staying one night on a given location, the tour stops there for two nights in a row, allowing the group a full day to explore the surroundings, recharge the batteries relaxing at the beach or the pool and, in some cases, ride a bit more around the area.
In this Alpine Routes tour I’m currently scouting, the rest day is at Livigno, a ski resort in the Italian Alps, close to the Swiss border. The town is a duty-free area for historical reasons, and attracts thousands of visitors all year long, making it a lively place to explore on foot and do some shopping as well. If walking and shopping is not exactly your cup of tea – or espresso, in this case – the tour has a fantastic riding option for those who can’t get enough of the excellent mountain roads around here.
We start the day crossing into Switzerland via the Bernina Pass and get to St Moritz and its neighbor villages by the lake before continuing through dream-like roads to Davos. At the top of the Flüela Pass, we stop for lunch and then descend into Italy with still enough time to walk around Livigno before a well-deserved dinner. It’s a 200 km loop guaranteed to put a big smile on your face after the ride is over. I know it put one on mine, and right by the start of the day when I stopped for this photo.
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