Today was a long day but fairly easy. The weather forecast said sunny and mid to upper 80s so I was worried about the heat. Fortunately, about an hour into the ride it got heavily overcast and even sprinkled a bit so that it was cool the whole day. Mostly easy riding. Not much remarkable to see. In fact much of the day I could have been in Southern California or Florida. Red tile roofs on bungalows with nicely manicured lawns and flowers with occasional palm trees and pine trees. Lots of petunias and roses. Smells of freshly mown grass and pruned hedges. In the fields it was mostly vineyards and corn. In fact I was surprised to see so much corn.
I have a few pictures below of some interesting things we saw. There is a city, Palmanova, that is a star fort city. It is walled with roads entering the city in a star pattern all meeting at the center. The roads each go through a gate that is only wide enough for one car so they have to alternate traffic flow. It was built in the late Renaissance. I also have a picture of a unique church that we passed and a few pictures of a palace that the road went through.
As I said today was a long ride and the instructions were complicated so I took the easy path and followed Michael who uploads stavia maps and so has step by step instructions on his Garmin. I would do the same but for some reason I cant get my Garmin to pair with my phone. Anyway I didn’t have to follow the instructions I just had to follow Michael. I have some pictures below of today’s instructions. We get these every morning before thee ride to guide us to the next destination.
Sometimes I forget how old I am and then get pulled up short on the strangest things. Today we passed a small town, Funicello, and at lunch I remarked that I had seen the town name and asked if it rang any bells. The only response I got was, “do you mean lemoncello?” I said no, Funicello to blank stares, so I said, “You know, mouseketeers” blank stares. No one had heard of the Mickey Mouse club and certainly not Annette Funicello. People if their 50s and 60s are too young to know about that show. Shocking. I mean Annette was the dream girl of every 7th grade boy. She was pretty, she seemed fun on TV and………she had breasts.
Tomorrow is the second hardest ride of the tour. It is long with lots of climbing. I hope it isn’t too hot.
