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…
