June 9th, Friday
60 kilometers
Lido de Tarquinia to Vertibo
"What's the matter?"
Jon says I was looking really dogged and wanted specifics.
"What's the matter?! Are you seriously asking me that question?! Let's see, I biked me ass off, can't use my lowest gear and when I try my chain pops off which of course is always on a hill of I'm tired, I have dead bugs on my legs and I've worked my knee really hard."
The day started off well enough. I got up shortly after sunrise to take the last few pictures of the Mediterranean Sea before we started inland toward Assissi. We started packing up. Showers came with the camping fee. They had this microchip system: plug in the microchip and your shower stall number and the shower runs for about three minutes. Since there was a lot of time left I planned on taking full advantage of the hot shower. Unfortunately, you had to re-insert your chip and shower stall number after each alloted time. This meant walking out of your shower stall naked because, you only have the small super absorbant camp towels never meant to cover the entire body, to the microship box six feet away in front of the HUGE entry way COMPLETELY open to the rest of the campground. Who was the brain surgeon who planned that? I opened the door to the stall, looked across to the microchip box, down to my towel and then out to the campground. Screw it, I want the hot shower so off I went to plug in my chip and shower number. Just my luck, the chip didn't immediately register so I was inserting and re-inserting the chip trying to get the machine to register the chip buck naked with all my bike clothes tan lines for the campground the see. I went back to our site and told Jon what happened. He had the same experience. We packed everthing up and paid the camp fee 13 euro - such a deal. We did do one very expensive load of laundry 4,50 euro. First big town was Tarquinia as outlined by our Lonely Planet guide. Well, you'd think that we wouldn't have any directional problem given that it was written out for us. We enjoyed the rolling hills and countryside, the sun was out. It was really beautiful and peaceful. Traffic was light. We stopped for a snack and water break at a major intersection surrounded by fields. We watched a large group of cyclist moving in the opposite direction and we all exchanged greetings.
We followed the road signs to Viterbo which turns out was not the path the guidebook had outlined. We took the country road instead of the major "highway". Instead of following the guidebook directions we were following the road signs which seemed to make more sense. As a result it lead us on a more scenic path through lots of farmland and vineyards. We were about 4 kilometers outside of a town called Tuscania. Neither one of us had read anything about this town during our research and assumed that it was just another town we would be passing through on our way to Viterbo. Knowing that there wouldn't be a public bathroom to be found we pulled over along the edge of a vineyard. Just as we were getting to continue on, a man we had passed early on who was walking alongside the road came up to us asking for food. He looked like a backpacker who had been on the road for quite a while judging by his dark tan. Jon says he had a decent backpack and bags. He had been walking along the left side of the road with a wooden staff that had beads, string, ribbon and items that appeared to have meaning and were placed on the staff with care. He spoke to us in Italien but he definitely had a German accent. Jon suggested we give him the "Rock" bread that we had bought the day before, not knowing it was so hard, I mean HARD. Hard as Tack, Jon says. It could break a tooth if you weren't careful and I'm not really sure if or what you eat it with but it was really, really flavorful. I gave it to the man a little worried he'd have trouble eating it since it looked like he not have all of his teeth. He asked us if we were English and said he was from Germany. Jon asked where he was going - to Tuscania and hopefully on to Viterbo by the end of the day which was about thirty kilometers. He continued to say that he had been walking for two years through Europe he said he had walked over eight thousand kilometers. Jon looked down at his shoes which he thought looked in good shape. He jokingly asked if those were his only pair of shoes (they appeared newer). The man replied that he had seven pairs of shoes. Once I handed him the bread he bid his farwell and sat under the tree and started opening the bag with the bread in it.
We stopped for groceries on the outskirts of town. I went into the store and Jon stayed with the bikes. While he was waiting for me a group of older men standing nearby came over to him "analyzing" the bikes. They spoke no English but made jestures indicating that they were discussing details of the bike appearing to have quite a bit of knowledge about bicycling.
We get a lot of attention everywhere we go. There are a lot of bikes in Italy but we haven't seem bikes like ours and have been told by many locals that they've never seen a bike like ours. Sometimes this attention, which is unlike anything we've experienced, feels a little uncomfortable and, at times, has been unsafe when we're on the road. At intersections cars will slow down to look at the bikes when we're waiting to cross the street. There has also been times when I've been trying to take a picture and people would stop directly in front of the subject of my pictures to look and comment on the bikes which has been a little frustrating.
Tuscania was like stepping through time. Just passed the grocery store you entered the the old town surrounded by a high all which stretched across a beautiful green valley. The cobblestone streets, medieval ruins - many of which were largely intact were amazing. It was so not what we were expecting to find when we came into town. You could see where some of the town walls were reconstructed while other parts were left unchanged. This gave us more of a sense of the age of the structures and the precise engineering that was involved considering what they had to use for tools at the time. As we pedaled out of town we could see the cliffs where the stone of the town may have been quarried.
On the way into Viterbo is when my bike started to have problems in the granny gear (my favorite gear). Time for a tune up.
Viterbo is almost as amazing as Tuscania it's the surrounding suburbs that take away from the overall beauty. The town is completely surround by a very high wall and is described as one of the best preserved medieval towns in Italy. We planned to stay two nights which is good since we had a hard day, my bike was acting up and there seemed to be much to discover about the town. As we pedaled into town and followed the one and only sign indicating a direction for the information kiosk. We couldn't find it right away which was fine - Jon went into a women's clothing store while I stayed with the bikes. Within a couple minutes Jon and two fashionabley dressed employees walked out together and you could tell they were describing the direction we should be going. When Jon returned to the bikes I asked if he had noticed the man's shoes - he had and I commented that you wouldn't see many guys in Seattle wearing those shoes! Jon said that they smelled good! Perhaps Jon was particularly aware of this since he had forgtten to put on deodarant in the morning. Trust me, you could tell - but I did reassure him that he didn't smell any worse than the man I could smell in the grocery store! I could smell that guy before could see him.
We found the information kiosk - Viterbo has no campground so we're staying at the very charming Hotel Roma. You'll see picture of the place in the photo gallery. We unloaded and locked up our bikes. I took a long hot shower while Jon watched the opening goals of the World Cup.
We went to dinner near our hotel after a short walk around town. It had caught our eye with the exposed stonework of the walls, and the old beams making up the ceiling. There was one other family there when we arrived. Jon ordered spaghetti Carbanara and I ordered Tortellini a la Toscana (I didn't know exactly what it was). We watched as pizzas were being made and placed in a stone pizza oven. Both our dishes were wonderful. Towards the end of our meal the place was flooded with locals, they all seemed to be together- every seat in the house was taken. They appeared to be regulars and the hostess was bringing out bowls of the entrée I had ordered from the kitchen as fast as she could while keeping up a steady stream of conversation with the patrons. We were so full after dinner we headed back to our room and I could nothing but get into bed and fell asleep while Jon watched a bit of tv (catching up on World Cup information)before doing the same.
