HAIL CAESAR LONDON TO ROME

Today's mileage translation was correct at 78 miles with 5,668 feet of elevation gain. Our ride today was not dissimilar to what we encountered yesterday, just a few miles less and a few thousand feet less of elevation gain, but the roads were worse than yesterday! The highlight of the day was getting to our hotel, a wonderful 13th century building with beautiful gardens and a huge swimming pool.  Upon completion, I went immediately for the pool, Michelle went immediately for the recovery beers. One final, short, 30 mile day and we enter the eternal City of ROMA.  The tour has been great but we're both ready for it to end.  I'm looking forward to getting off my bike and watching LE TOUR de FRANCE on the television. Best, M&M

Our route sheet showed today's distance at 57 miles with an elevation gain of 2,110 feet.  Sounds like an easy ride, right.  Well, the person who translated meters into miles made a slight mistake.  The correct translation resulted in a distance of 85 miles and 9,000 feet of elevation gain!!  Quite a different story. The day was hot, in the 90's and the roads were terrible.  We departed at our usual 8:30 hour, stopped for a quick coffee break at 30 miles and again at 50 miles for an incredibly great pasta lunch.  We arrived at our hilltop hotel at just before 6:00 pm.  We had enough time to shower before heading out to dinner.  We're staying in a wonderful small hotel in the quaint village of Sovana. We enjoyed lamb dinner and turned out the lights before 9:30. Tomorrow is the last of the 4 hard days before we make our final ride into ROMA on July 4th. Best, M&M

64 miles and 6,078' of elevation gain.  Today was a beautiful ride allowing us to reach our destination of Cortona by 2:00 pm.  The day started out with a long but beautiful climb that lasted some 8 miles.  It was following by an equally wonderful descent.  Then came about 30 miles of mostly flat riding before was hit two more "Lumps", another flat and then a final climb of 5 miles to our hotel. We left Emilia di Romagna at the top of the first climb and entered Tuscany.  I'm convinced all hotels and towns in Tuscany are on the top of hills............big hills that would have let the inhabitants protect themselves from the likes of Caesar's army. Our hotel tonight sits on top of the hill so the setting is beautiful but our postage stamp room would have fit in last nights jacazzi. Tomorrow is a very big day, some 80 miles and almost 9,000' of climbing.  Our legs are tired, our cycling kits need a laundry and we're ready for our tour to end so we can ...

Today was a long day, 83 miles and 6,398' of elevation gain.  The morning ride was quite flat but following lunch we started a long climb that lasted some 36 miles with only a few short descents inbetween the climbs.  We moved further West into the Apennines. Clouds rolled in after lunch and the rain started.............we rode the final 36 miles in the cold rain. We arrived in Bagno di Romagna (Emilia Romagna) to pink bikes lining the streets and pink umbrellas strung over the street,  These were signs that the Giro d'Italia had passed through the town just a few weeks back.  The remnants were still visible. Our room was huge and held what seemed to be a 6 person jacuzzi in the bathroom.  This came in handy as therapy for my sore legs.  Dinner was one of the best of our trip, a buffet that covered all the Italian favorites............pasta's, cheese of all kinds, breads, homemade soup, wine, gelato, and on and on and on. Best to All, M&M

Today was the final "flat" day and was meant to be a "recovery" ride of only 55 miles before the climbing begins again tomorrow. Our "recovery" ride was anything but......................the wind picked up producing gusts up to 50 mph and of course, much of the time the wind was in our face (but thankfully no rain). About half way through the ride it was necessary to take a "ferry" ride to cross a small river.  The ride lasted about 30 seconds and cost 1 euro. We arrived in Revenna around 1:00 pm, did some laundry, took a nap and prepared ourselves for the final 5 days of riding. Best, M&M

Today was a 77.4 mile day with only 1,385' of elevation gain.  We have 2 more days of "flatline" elevation and then we start climbing again when we get into the Apennines. We started the day with a 7 mile ride to the southern tip of Lido (Venice) where we took two ferry rides to get us to the mainland of Chioggia.  We had a beautiful day until we reached lunch at the 54 mile mark.  Clouds rolled in and the sky turned grey while we were enjoying our ham, tomato and mozzarella sandwiches.  The wind picked up and it started to rain heavily.  After 15 minutes the rain subsided and a group of riders started out to complete the final 20 miles to the hotel.  Ten minutes after they left the sky opened up with torrential rain, thunder and lightening.  Glad we waited. Another 15 minutes and the skies cleared and we road the final mileage to the hotel without a single drop of rain (the others got soaked!) We entered Ferrara and noticed a number of roads clos...