Month: June 2019

Okay, this is just getting too crazy. We’re having the time of our lives, riding hard and eating (not to mention drinking) really well. I’m afraid I can’t keep staying up into the wee hours writing about it all and posting pictures.

Here’s what I’m thinking: I’m going to give you just a few details each day, and post a few pictures, then later, maybe when we’re off the bikes but still exploring in Florence & Amsterdam, but it might not be until much later, I’ll post more photos. Okay? Okay, I’m glad we’re all in agreement then…

I left off yesterday with a sunset photo from our room in Montalpuciano. The next morning, we rode to Cortona, a 28+ mile ride, with about 1100 feet of elevation gain all told. It was a lovely ride, with some even lovelier sites along the way:

Thank goodness we had some clouds for the climb up to Cortona!

After we the inevitable climb up to the old town center, we found our hotel, got showered and unpacked, then explored a bit. We’d finally adjusted our schedule to get riding earlier in the day (but not TOO early 😁), so that we had time to explore the destination that afternoon. Here’s some highlights:

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:

View of town from the ‘fortrezza’

On the road to Montepulciano

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

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:

Mallory resting and taking in the view

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:

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

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

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!

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:

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

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…

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…