John Clark – Page 9 – JC's iPhone Blog

Cortona to Arezzo

Still trying to get caught up here, but it’s challenging when poor connectivity is paired with great riding weather & amazing food/drink. 👨🏼‍🎨

We’re in Sansepolcro now, where we have two nights in the same hotel. It was almost 90º out, but we still managed to do a loop ride around a nearby reservoir and go up/down about 1000 ft over the entire ride. Now we’re relaxing in the air conditioning in our room, and planning the next week’s rides.

We rode from Cortona to Arezzo on Friday, mostly on a gravel two-track that wound along a big canal. It was just over 27 miles, and our flattest ride yet, with more downhill than uphill by far (phew!) Here’s a few images from the ride:

Cortona breakfast view (including another mid-flight swallow!)

Centuries-old structure (with a hazy view of Cortona in the distance)

Old bridge along the Sentiero della Bonifica (note Mallory waving on bridge)

Our hotel in Arezzo was right downtown, with a great view of the piazza in front of the hotel and old city beyond. I’ll follow that up with some images of the old city…

View from the terrazza on top of our hotel, with the old city in the distance

One of the main piazzas in the old city, decorated with shields all ‘round

The spire of the cathedral in great light

“Rondels” in a museum’s old window, for you glass nerds

Arezzo alley with flowers — Another spectacular alley, this one in Arezzo

Gorgeous building on the piazza in Arezzo — A gorgeous building on the piazza in Arezzo

Montepulciano to Cortona

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:

Idyllic Italian countryside — I can’t seem to get enough of these idyllic vistas…

Giant pine tree — What are these pines are with the growth habit of a deciduous tree?

Cortona from the valley

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:

Clouds over the valley — Clouds always help an image like this, eh?

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:

Beautiful flowers next to a house — I loved all the flowers around this house…

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

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

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:

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!