Take Me To The Giro!

Gentle readers, we hope to please you with another installment of our adventures. As we write this, we are trying to recover from four consecutive weekends of travelling in which we saw 7 countries outside the Czech Republic. Whew!

Our goal for the final weekend of travelling: witness our heroes as they raced across Italy in this year's Giro d'Italia. We wanted to watch stage 7, a race from Cesena to Sartara. Quick background: The Giro is the younger sibling of the Tour de France. Held in Italy, the Giro starts in early May and lasts three weeks.

Other, less important goals of the weekend included swimming in the Adriatic Sea and seeing a bit of Italy.

It is important to note that a minor disaster occured on this trip: someone forgot to charge the camera battery before we left. Luckily we were able to take many pictures, but of course not as many as one of us would have liked...

Enough chatter, let's get on with it:

On Friday morning after teaching one lesson I went to rent a station wagon, so that we would have plenty of space to put the bikes and maybe to sleep if the weather turned ugly. However, our favorite car rental agency had only compact cars available. But with some luck, we managed to fit the bikes in the back, along with our camping gear.

Road trip! We left Prague at 12:15 pm.


After we made it out of the city we traded places. Nearing the Czech/German border:

Before 4:00 we were looking at the foothills of the Austrian Alps:


A quick break in Austria to buy a 7 Euro highway sticker. We stopped thinking of them as road taxes and instead thought of it as paying for the views:

After we crossed the border into Italy we paid another Autostrada toll. We like to think of it as an 8 Euro photo opportunity:

As we cruised down out of the mountains towards fair Verona (where we didn't stop, let alone lay our scene) we perfected our out-of-car picture taking. A mountain-top castle in Italy:


We were making great time, but soon it was dark and we were in the middle of Italy. We passed Bologna and Ravenna without leaving the Autostrada, and arrived in Cesena around 11. We felt good, and although we were in the town where the race would start the following day, we decided to keep driving to try and get closer to the summit of the tallest mountain of the day. We left the Italian highway after paying a 28 Euro tax. Ouch. But the roads were nice. After leaving the toll road we were on small roads that were in bad condition. But we kept following our map towards the summit of Monte Catria. As we got closer we started to see signs alerting the public to the race. We followed these signs along the route and soon were on very small roads, winding up into the mountains.

We drove through a nice square and thought about asking for directions, but didn't. 10 minutes later we were driving by a park and saw some teenagers. It was about 2:15 in the morning. I asked them for directions to the top of the mountain. They barely spoke English but offered to let us stay at there house. I told them we had our tent, and that we wanted to stay at the top of the mountain. They got very excited, and in keeping with every Italian stereotype they kindly offered, with there arms flailing as they spoke, to offer to take us to the top. Bear in mind that there were five people talking at all times, and only two of them in English! We followed them up a small mountain road and finally they stopped and said "You sleep here." I asked if we were at the top of the mountain, because the road continued upwards. "Ahhh! Ci! Oh!" They quickly shouted for us to follow them and climbed back in there car. 15 minutes later we stopped again, this time near other tents and campers. "The top! You sleep here!" We thanked them as much as we could, but they didn't seem concerned with anything. Back in there car they climbed, and they sped off, leaving us at the top of a mountain at 3:00 am. We set up our tent and immediately fell asleep.

We woke up to this:


And of course to the sounds of cars coming up the mountain in the morning. I imagined huge crowds, and so it was pleasant to have nice-sized crowds of people arriving at the summit. Lots of people on bikes were riding up and down the mountain, and everyone was very helpful and hospitable. People showed us their newspapers so we could read about Friday's race, and they also offered us food! We unpacked the bikes and road down the hill that the professionals would be riding up in a matter of hours.

If I might add a few thoughts here. . . . one of the coolest things about the weekend was riding up the mountain. Unfortunately, I was too scared to ride down the mountain so we only did about 5 km. I am sure that you have heard some of the stereotypes of Italian men. . . they are very vocal, especially towards beautiful women like myself. Well, here, the stereotypes were true. I rode up the mountain to cheers of "bellissimo!" and "bravo" and one man even ran along side me for a while - just like I was Jan Ullrich. Nothing gets you moving like that! :)


As my brother had a birthday coming up, we decided to send him a message from Italy using the road as a communication device. Too bad there was not very much coverage of the race, but Bennett I'm sure at least one or two pros were wondering who "Bennett" was as they raced past!


We found a great spot to watch the stage.

We wrote a few messages in chalk and then let some of the other spectators write things. Every few minutes a big white truck with Giro logos painted on it would drive buy to sell t-shirts. The family next to us on the grassy hill bought a half-dozen of them. We let them use our chalk, and they wrote all over the road! Not a bad backdrop for watching a bike race.


Soon we heard the helicopters, saw the motorcycles, and knew that the riders would be coming. Here comes the first rider up the hill: (at the bottom you can see part of our chalk writing: HAPPY BIRTHDAY BENNETT was written out on the road)

Then the rest of the group came by. Too busy to take pictures, I was mesmerized seeing Ullrich, Basso, Salvodeli, and all the rest of the pros. I finally got the camera working as the second group came by:


Now you can see the full birthday greeting:

After the riders went by, we road our bikes up the final few kilometers to the summit. Then we loaded the car and Kristina drove down the hill while I rode down. Good things about riding down the hill: 1.) The pros had just been down the very same road. 2.) The scenery was amazing. 3.) This road was recently repaved and was extremely smooth. The bad: 1.) The hill was so steep that I wondered if I would have any brake pads left at the bottom. 2.) The smell of burning automobile brakes was overpowering at times.

If you look you can see the road winding down the mountain:



We left the race course and headed to the coast, were we found a nice village near Rimini with a beach on the Adriatic. In the Meditteranean twice in the span of one week!




We drove a bit farther and found Camping Paradisio:
Not a bad view:

If you noticed the clouds in the above picture, you won't be surprised to find out that we woke up in our tent to the sound of pouring rain. Oh well. We tried to fit everything back in the car:


While driving back to Prague we decided to stop in a little town called Venice:

Our second city this month to feature canals:
We got lost in the winding, narrow streets, and so we stopped for lunch:

We weren't kidding about narrow:
We thought that the bikes would help us see more of Venice in a shorter amount of time. Unfortunately after three or four locals told us not to ride bikes we spent more time carrying them than riding them.

But despite being bike-unfriendly, Venice does have a very unique charm.
My nose has been reacting rather poorly to the lovely European spring, and to commemorate the boxes of tissue I've been going through we took this picture:
San Marco Square:

After leaving Venice we cruised north and were only about 45 minutes from Croatia. The desire to cross the border was VERY strong, but we had to teach on Monday morning and just could not squeeze it in. If only we had one more day!

An Alpine thundershower dumped rain. We stopped at a gas station for snacks and a bathroom break. Speaking of gas, for all of you complaining back in the USA, you should know that we spent an average of 45 Euros each time we filled the tiny 8 gallon gas tank on our car. 45 Euros is over $50. Add road tolls and driving here is not cheap. But it is fun!




Driving in Europe is especially fun when you can pull of the Autobahn and have a nice picnic with the Alps as a backdrop:




Autobahn sunset between Salzburg, Austria, and Munich, Germany:
Farewell!

Next Weekend: Prague!