Day Hiking in Italy-Gran Paradiso-Valsavarenche-Benevolo

Hike in Gran Paradiso Area #3 

 

Walk to Rifugio Benevolo and Truc Santa Elena/12 km out and back, 600 m elevation gain

On the third day we went to the same local coffee shop and tried to order Marccino but a bartender didn’t understand my pronunciation. The bartender was different from the day and two days before. So we ordered cappuccino.

The trailhead parking was large at Thumel. Already many cars were parked at 10 a.m. This was the most populated hike we have done in Italy. I don’t know why only this hike attracts people despite the fact all of the area is beautiful.

We saw pretty mountains and countless waterfalls from the higher elevation over the hills. I have never seen that many waterfalls at one hike. About two hours we arrived at the refugio but we decided to walk further because there were many people. 5 minutes walk after we passed the rifugio, there was few people. The reason was probably the trail was faint and there was much snow at the beginning of June. We sat down 300 m higher than the rifugio and had lunch. Further the hill, mountains were all covered with snow. It was like a frozen land and very pretty. I got a little sad because that was the last hike during the trip. I talked to myself that there would be next time.

Then we went to Milano near the airport to fly the next day to the U.S.

The hotel is called “Milan Hotel”. When I saw the entrance I thought, “Hummm, this looks suspicious” Anyway we checked in. They additionally charged 10 euro for tax. It was a hidden cost. The room was fine but three rooms had to share one shower and toilet. There was free wifi but it worked only near the reception area on the ground floor. Not in our room on the third floor. The shower was hard to regulate the water temperature. Sometimes too hot sometimes lukewarm and cold water was accumulated because of bad drainage. Just after laying down, two families came to the same floor and a baby and a kid cried hard. They got satisfied and quiet soon, and I had some sleep but soon I woke up because the room was tooooooo hot. I couldn’t go back to sleep and 4 a.m. came. The time we had to get up to go to the airport. Free breakfast was not available at that time. I took 7:10 a.m. flight from Milan to Dusseldorf. I had a long layover (6 hours and 50 minutes) there and finally flew to SFO.