The travel blog lives!

It’s been almost three years since my last post, but here we are back in Europe, Italy this time, and about to start our most ambitious bike tour yet!

We landed in Florence this afternoon, after leaving Denver yesterday afternoon. The flight wasn’t bad at all; Lufthansa treats its passengers very well, even in economy, but we probably didn’t get much more than a few hours of sleep.

I’m not going to write much tonight, as it’s just past 1 am here. We did have a lovely walk around Florence this evening, and enjoyed some lovely “golden hour” light…

Florence countryside from the plane
The view from the plane just before landing. That looks like some hilly riding!
Florence cathedral in all its glory
Can you believe that sky?
Mallory in front of the cathedral
A weary traveler…
Historic Florence building at sunset
The ‘golden hour’ showing off!
The Arno at sunset
The Arno at sunset

A lot to catch you up on…

Apologies for the dead air here, but we’ve found that cell service/wifi here in Italy are awfully weak. My last post was four days ago, so I’m going to have to catch up over the next couple of days, which I hope won’t be too confusing.

We arrived in Florence on Saturday, 1 June (as they write it over here). The next day, we caught a train to Siena, where the bike touring would begin on Monday morning. Siena is a gorgeous city, high on a hill like most medieval Italian cities (making them easier to defend). And, like almost every Italian town/city, Siena has a “duomo” (cathedral), but theirs is particularly spectacular. We walked all over the city, and bought tickets for a tour of the duomo on Monday morning, then met with Giovanni, our Italian guide, to get the bikes, panniers and all the maps/directions. Here’s a few shots from that afternoon:

The Duomo at Siena
Siena’s Duomo. You’ve heard of Italian marble? It’s everywhere here.
An Italian ‘back alley’, Siena-style
An Italian ‘back alley’, Siena-style!
Siena’s Duomo from near our hotel
Siena’s Duomo from near our hotel

Here are some photos from our tour of the Duomo the next morning:

A thin slab of marble lets light into the narrow, dark spiral stairs to the roof
A thin slab of marble lets light into the narrow, dark spiral stairs to the roof
The view from the roof of the duomo
The view from the roof. I can’t believe I was lucky enough to catch that swallow!
Looking down on the interior of the cathedral
Looking down on the interior of the cathedral

One of the rose windows from high in the rafters

One of the rose windows from high in the rafters
Looking up at the interior of the main dome
Back on the ground, looking up at the interior of the main dome

Lastly, a photo of the astounding ceiling and artwork in the “library” adjoining the cathedral:

After all that, we went back to the hotel, loaded up the bikes and headed toward Montalcino just after 1 pm. We knew we had a 39 mile ride, but we didn’t know just how much it was going to kick our butts! 🥵

The last ~4 miles was particularly grueling, and we were already bushed when we reached the bottom of that 1500 foot climb, so we called ahead to the hotel, and asked if they’d be willing to send a car to pick up our panniers & backpacks. That made a huge difference, so we decided to call Giovanni and ask if he could arrange to transport our stuff every day for the rest of the trip. He said it would be no problem, but he also shared that the Siena->Montalcino “core” ride was the toughest of the entire tour. Hearing that certainly made us feel less like wimps, but we decided that transferring the luggage for the balance of our 15 days of riding would be well worth it.

Anyhoo, it was well after 8 when we finally were settled in our room and showered, so we decided to stay in and have dinner there in the hotel dining room. It turned out to be a wise choice, as they served us a splendid meal, made all the more satisfying by knowing how many calories we’d burned earlier that day.

I’ll close for now with a few shots from the ride that day…

Fields and cypress near Siena
The landscape is as pastoral as it can get, pastures and cypress everywhere.
Poppies, cypress and green grass
I forgot to mention poppies…
More green fields, this one with a lone evergreen in it
More green fields, this one with a lone evergreen in it

Looking up at Montalcino from the foot of the last big climb

Looking up at Montalcino from the foot of the last big climb

I’ll pick up tomorrow with Montalcino, the ride to Montepulciano (where we stayed two nights), and our rest day there. With any luck, I can catch up with where we are in a couple days…

Montalcino & Montepulciano

Still trying to catch up here, and so many photos to share of the stunningly picturesque countryside! My last post left off at the arrival in Montalcino, at the end of that first, looooong day’s ride. [I realize that this blog can be a little confusing, because each post is written chronologically, of course, but the nature of blogs makes the posts show up in reverse-chronological order. Sorry, but “welcome to my world”, as I like to say. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ]

Montalcino was the second of the many beautiful little hill towns we will be visiting over the next couple of weeks. I ended the last post with a photo looking up at the town from the bottom of the hill; here’s a photo from the top, looking down over the surrounding countryside:

Since we’d arrived so late the night before, and stayed at the hotel for dinner, we spent some time on Tuesday morning exploring:

The view from our breakfast table
The view from our breakfast table
Our hotel, with the church tower beyond
Our hotel, with the church tower beyond
Beautiful flowers next to a house
I loved all the flowers around this house…
View of town from the ‘fortrezza’

View of town from the ‘fortrezza’

On the road to Montepulciano

Another gorgeous day in the Italian countryside for ride #2:

Thunderhead over Italian villa
What a cloud, eh?
Colorful flags in San Quirico d’Orcia
We stopped in the tiny village of San Quirico d’Orcia along the way

A view of Montepulciano in the distance

A closer view approaching Montepuciano

Approaching Montepulciano

A rest day (Already? Yes, already)

Since we were staying two nights in Montepulciano, we decided to take a day off from the bikes. This is a longer tour than we’ve ever done before, plus day one really whipped us good, so we didn’t even have any guilt pangs about taking a day off already.

Montepulciano is another beautiful town, with lots to see, so we didn’t have any trouble filling up the day. We walked a ton, and were enamored of all the little alleys everywhere:

Alley number 1

Alley number 2

Mallory resting and taking in the view

Mallory resting and taking in the view

View from near the top of Montepulciano
…and the view she’s taking in

We also took in an impressive little museum exhibit about Leonardo da Vinci’s explorations of water dynamics and the potential for water projects in the region. We had the exhibit to ourselves the entire time too. Outside the museum, which was housed in the the town’s fortrezza, there was a wonderful little park:

Tree-lined path up to the ‘fortrezza’/museum in Montepulciano
The tree-lined path up to the ‘fortrezza’/museum
Mallory photographing the grape arbor in the park beside the museum
Mallory photographing the grape arbor in the park beside the museum
Grape arbor
Mallory enjoying the grape arbor

Later in the day, we stumbled onto a very old wine cellar…

Giant wine barrels
Humongous wine barrels!
Wine cellar in Montepulciano
Definitely a cellar, down about 6 flights of stairs…
Flowers growing out of a rock wall
Flowers on a wall outside the wine cellars

Oh and here’s our room in Montepulciano, as well as the view from our room:

Our room
Look at that ceiling!
Sunset over Montepulciano
Sunset over Montepulciano

On Thursday, we rode from Montepulciano to Cortona, and this morning we had our easiest ride yet, from Cortona to Arezzo, where I sit writing this post. It’s well after midnight here now, so I’m going to turn in. I’m going to keep trying to get current in the next couple of days, but no promises!