After our early morning rooster wake up call, we packed our things and stopped at the pizzeria where we had dinner the previous night to use the free wifi and picnic tables while we ate our breakfast.
Once we were finished, we hit the road again and made our way to Vertralla. We spotted a pharmacy to pick up some vasaline to ease the pressure on our seats and found a local bike shop so we decided to stop in and see what was inside. The owner was very nice and even spoke a little English, so we were able to chat for a little bit while we looked around. The shop was little strange since it looked just like an American shop, just with foreign brands that we never heard of.
Vetralla Bike Shop
After we were done at the shop, we set of for the next town on our route, Viterbo. Viterbo is a larger city and required some unexpected navigation on our part. At one point, we followed the signs to Siena thinking that it would keep us on our route, only to find out that we were headed towards a high speed 4 lane highway. High speed is used loosely since Italians seem to drive as fast as possible everywhere, the police don’t enforce the speed limits. We quickly decided to backtrack and made our way back to the wrong turn and were able to find the correct road. Once in the city, we once again found ourselves unsure of our route. At this point, we were getting frustrated and decided the best solution would be to stop and eat. After a quick lunch we wandered around the city trying to find our way towards Siena. We made a few more wrong turns, but did make it out of the city shortly thereafter.
Cyclist heading through downtown Viterbo
After we found the correct road, we started to climb up to another lake, Lago di Bolsena. We had a fast descent down near the lake level but did not see the shoreline until the northern side of the lake, where we stopped for a few sandwiches and to relax for a little while. We changed out of our cycling gear and into beach clothes, then found a spot in the sand where we could lay down. We ended up falling asleep to make up for the early wake up and after about an hour of rest, got back into our riding gear and left town. The food and rest were a big help and we started to tick of the kilometers quickly. We then discussed where we should camp for the night, and both agreed that we should go for another hour or so before stopping just before dusk. Shortly after, we stopped outside of a pizzeria to see if there was wifi, when we noticed two tents set up beside the building as well as some bikes. The riders of the bikes came over and introduced themselves, saying that they were from Malaysia and on a tour from Paris to Rome. They had stopped a little earlier and asked the owner of the pizzeria if there were any good camping spots nearby, and he offered to let them camp at his restaurant. We were excited about the company so we tried to ask the owner if we could join them, and although he didn’t speak any English, we got the message across and he was friendly enough to let us stay. We ordered some pasta and beer and joined our new Malaysian friends for dinner where we picked their brains about bike touring and the riding that they have done, which we will be doing later on. After dinner, we all headed back to our tents and called it a night.
Our pizzeria campground
Matt with our Malaysian friends
For details on our day two route, click here.
Really neat update.
ReplyDeleteLooks like you guys are having a good time, still trying to find your own pace and rhythm. How about a good look at yalls camping set up?
ReplyDeleteHey Dustin, sorry for the delayed response. We definately had some growing pains the first few days, but are figuring things out along the way. Is there anything in particular you want to know about the camping set up? We have talked about a post showing some of the places that we have slept along the way, so hopefully we can get that done sometime soon.
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