June 28

 We left bright and early (since the nuns serve breakfast at 6am!!) at a pleasant 65 degrees. 

That is Montefiascone as we left in the morning.

Of course we passed many grape orchards and olive trees - but today we also rode through several sunflower fields.
 Most of the day went pretty well.  Some hills sprinkled in just to keep us honest.  Ahead in the distance we could see our next hilltop town, Radicofani.

That is Radicofani up on the hill.

This is Mark form Belgium.  We talked about our riding in Italy.

The final 8 miles were uphill and took quite a while in the mid day heat.  But we made it and Radicofani was just a beautiful village.  We checked into our pilgrim's hostel and we were the only 2 people there.

Our hostel.  An old school building.
Our lunch stop in Radicofani.  We had porchetta and pecorino sandwiches.

Very pretty town.  Very clean.



And finally a wonderful dinner.

Of course, the big benefit of riding up to a hilltop town is that in the morning you start all downhill.  So we will rest up and look forward to starting tomorrow.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

July 26

Image
 Today we left Bulle and headed for Lausanne.  Another great day; sunshine, no wind, no rain, and miles and miles of downhill.  Our path took us to the shores of Lake Geneva in the town of Vevey, which was just beautiful.  We headed east, away from Lausanne, to look around the town of Montreux.  Montreux is famous for having a fantastic Jazz Festival.  This year the festival ran from July 5th to July 20th.  Many of the stages were still standing along the waterfront.  It must have been a great 2 weeks.  Will have to come back sometime for the Jazz.  Also in Montreux is a statue of Freddie Mercury (from Queen).  He had a home here and spent a lot of time here.  Also, Charlie Chaplin spent the last 25 years of his life here and also has a statue to remember him. Our first view of Lake Geneva from up in the hills. Vineyards around Vivey.  We would be riding through those vineyards later in the day. Waterfront promenade around...
Read more

July 29

Image
 We started our day today by going out to breakfast with our hosts on a pier at Lake Geneva.  They are leaving on a one year bike trip on Wednesday, so we had many questions for them.  And since neither one of them has done any significant bicycle touring - they had many questions about our journey as well.  It was a fun breakfast in a beautiful setting.  After saying our goodbyes, Brian and I rode around the city a little bit and then headed for our hotel at the airport.  Once there we had a little lunch and then relaxed for a while.  In the evening we got back on the bikes for one last time - this time we rode into neighboring France for groceries and dinner.  On the way back to the hotel we passed 1500 miles of bicycling for this trip!! The confluence of the Rhone river (on the left) and the Arve river (on the right). Sculpture in front of CERN - the largest particle physics laboratory in the world.  The sculpture is covered with famous ph...
Read more

July 27

Image
 Our last day of bike riding on this trip.  The end of a trip always gets to me.  There's so much time and effort put into planning and executing a trip like this, that it's bittersweet when it's over.  When we start, the end seems so far away.  But this trip in particular involved some real struggle.  I have ridden my bike over the Rockies and over mountains in Vermont and New Hampshire - but I have never encountered steeper hills than on this trip.  The reward, of course, was the beauty of Switzerland.  I'm glad we ended the ride here. Today we left Lausanne for Geneva.  Another sunny day.  No big hills in our way but my legs were still talking to me the entire way, saying "when are you going to get off this bike?"  But we made it and dipped our bike tires into the lake at Geneva.  We have a host named Sarah for the next 2 nights.  She and her boyfriend are planning a one year bike trip and they leave on Wednesday - the ...
Read more