Italy - cycling, food, motorcycle hero worship

The Italian part of My Big Fat Vacation was centered on riding bicycles in the Italian countryside, and then eating terrific food at the cycling hotel in the company of the people you spent the day riding with. That said, here's a picture that has nothing to do with that but is from Italy:

Here's a view of the beach in front of our hotel, looking north towards Venice (no, it's not visible...I just wanted to get a reference to a famous Italian city in there).  The water was nice, the beach endless...and I was only down here this one time, too busy eating riding and resting.

The Belvedere hotel has marketed itself very thoroughly and successfully in the greater Vancouver area, and as a result the majority of guests in the hotel were Canadians from the lower mainland. It's basically an all-inclusive, with the advantages and drawbacks that implies. I imagine summer camps were like this, for kids who went to the same ones for several years - people get to know each other and the staff from prior years. You were out in the Italian countryside all day, but not really involved with Italy at all. The people at the hotel and the ride guides and the food were all fantastic, and I'd recommend this place to anyone who wants to ride a bike in Italy.  They do it all.

This was my bike, a Wilier carbon frame with all-Campagnolo components, a much nicer bike than my own.  It was worth whatever I paid to rent it just because I got to tell my brother I rode an all-Campy bike. 

Every evening the idea was that you'd pick a ride for the next day that suited your level of fitness, fatigue, and ambition. You'd get up the next morning, eat a huge breakfast, pick up a sandwich and a banana, and take your bike from the locker to the assigned meeting area outside the hotel. You'd go for whatever ride you'd elected, arrive back at the hotel early to mid-afternoon, and commence eating, drinking, and variously goofing off until it was time to pick the next day's ride and go to bed. This seems like a good way to live.   

The "eat and drink with the people you rode all day with" part of the program.  I made this deliberately ill-focused for the sake of anonymity. All right, that last part's a lie.

This is a sample menu from a random day that explains the poor focus in that last picture, as well as why some of the people in it are looking down, focused on their plates.  The food was just great, and it was like this every day, every meal.

As faithful readers can attest, I am a keen observer of my surroundings, so after a couple of days of this I began to become vaguely aware that there are a lot of castles and fortresses and ancient walled towns in Italy. In fact it seemed like we saw a different one each ride. I don't know how they managed it, but somehow the Italians have managed to locate all these places on the tops of hills so that cyclists have to work for the reward of seeing them. I didn't even know cycling was a thing in the Middle Ages.

One of the first Castles of the Day.  Note how tiny that car is, yet how it just fits into that gate.  Maybe that`s why there are so many tiny cars in Europe, to get through all these tiny gates.  Even donkeys and horses must be small there.

Here's what that opening looks like from the inside. I can't believe people drive in here.

...but here is the Main Drag leading in from that little tiny doorway, and there are a bunch of cars...

 A couple of noticeable things about Italian roads and drivers:
- drivers were really, really good about dealing with cyclists on all those narrow switchback roads.  You would think all Italians rode bikes and know what it`s like.
- when you see a bit of road marked off as under repair, you often notice that the markers, cones, etc, appear to have been there for a few seasons. In Germany, when you saw cones and markers you also saw guys in vests with shovels and equipment actually making repairs.

There`s a town we rode through that had a gigantic poster in the middle of it celebrating home town hero Grand Prix motorcycle champion Valentino Rossi. I hope Valentino is a good guy, because it seems clear there`s any number of people in this area who would die for him in a heartbeat. Little flags in his colours with his number 46 on them are everywhere. He should retire and go into politics immediately, I think.

This is the private estate, complete with private race track, of Gran Prix motorcycle champion Valentino Rossi. The road from where this pic was taken is way up a lot of hills.  I think we went by here three different days. That`s the Adriatic there in the background on the right.

This is Valentino`s number on a flagpole by the road...taken from the wrong side.  Again, the wrong side and poor focus are my protest over runaway hero worship.  Not.

Urbino, home of Raphael, the highlight of the Italian week, well worth the long climb to get to.

We came from the viewpoint on that last picture down this VERY steep and busy street into the heart of Urbino.  This is the biggest street in town. It`s in places like this that some of the drawbacks of having your feet clipped onto pedals tend to become apparent.

My friend Michael says Hello from Urbino.

All our bikes lined up for coffee break outside the university in Urbino. That one you like best, the one you think is coolest, the red one third from the right, that one is mine.

It floors me that people, kids really, get to go to university in a place like this.

This was in the middle of another castle town on top of a particularly nasty climb...a little special fountain just for cyclists.

Intrepid hill-climb specialist Michael Jones saddling up after his turn at the fountain.

A typical view of countryside, with the Adriatic way to the east, and the switchbacks we`d just laboured up in the foreground.  Nowhere is more beautiful than British Columbia, but this was beautiful.

This is a vineyard, where we went and picked grapes and drank wine and ate lunch, and then rode home.  The wisdom of that last part is questionable, but not the pleasure.

A memorial to a big battle in WWII.

Picking grapes, prior to crushing them with our feet.  Really.

This is a cafe in San Marino, a tiny independent republic on the top of a mountain.  The cafe is carved right out of the rock.  I think this is the lone image I captured of the Republic of San Marino.

This is some small village central plaza. That round brick thing is a well, with a locked iron lid on it.

Ever wonder where pomegranates come from?  They come from trees growing randomly beside Italian country roads.

I don't think I have a lot more to add here, pithy observations to make.  This was a great holiday, suitable for cyclists of all ages and audacity, wonderful scenery and cool places.  I barely mentioned San Merino, a tiny little hilltop republic, (here's a Euro coin with their name on it):

said nothing about what it's like to zoom through a roundabout in a group of 20 cyclists, (the rule is if the leader of the group makes it into the roundabout, the rest of the group is treated by other motorists as one vehicle, so if your leader gets it right the rest of you just follow...every roundabout is like a little mini-parade), or how ridiculously expensive sunscreen, of all things, seems to be, or how helpful and accommodating every single person working at the Belvedere is, or what "haig" in your espresso tastes like...but I'd recommend it all to anyone, anytime.