Chianti and Tuscan Regions - Writing

The chianti region.....Wow! That is the best word to describe this portion of our travels. The scenery here is so unique, I can absolutely see why movies have been made about it. We wove our way up and down, left and right through rolling hills of vineyards, small towns and wineries galore. Bunches of picturesque purple and green grapes can be seen from the road, perfectly placed on the vine. The small towns put on festivals to gather the local vineyards, hosted in the "downtown area" with music, ice cream, and aritists. You can buy a wine glass and go around and taste all of the local wines, maybe 20 booths in all. If we had time to actually plan our trip rather than simply go with each day, we would have stayed in a room and taken full advantage of this wine tasting. But drinking wine and riding our bikes through these windy roads is definitely not a good idea. Because of this, we stood on the outside and observed the smiles on peoples faces and watched in amazement as the conversations jumped from person to person with questions being answered and the wine glasses filling like wild fire. I felt like we were watching an older movie about how a wine-maker made their name. The bottles of wine consumed must have been in the thousands.
One of the finer parts of region was the ability to stop at the local wineries and fill our platypus bags (lightweight containers made to travel with wine and not glass) with 1.75 liters of wine between the two. We consumed so much wine on this portion of our trip. It was cheap and absolutely delicious. The wine comes from these huge barrels that sit behind the shelves lined with bottles and bottles of wine. They offer tastings that are served with olives and bread and occasionally spreads. We continued riding until we camped for the night and enjoyed our local wine with pasta. That is another thing, the pasta in Italy is just as delicious as it is known for. I have never been a big pasta person, but man these Italians can cook! Our dinners fluctuated between a variety of pasta noodles with a meat/veggies sauce and a delicious spice mixture that we purchased our first day in Italy that makes all the difference in its flavor, meat or ricotta tortellini, or even pumpkin filled ravioli. A great way to end fantastic days of riding.

From the chianti region, we traveled into the Tuscan region. More rolling hills that can be extremly tiring at times, but our surroundings are so beautiful that we often forget about achy legs and heat. The golden rolling hills travel for miles and houses are placed randomly on the tops. Riding for a solid 10 hours one day, we finally arrived at our destination of Montepulciano. Winding roads and dusk are not the most desired circumstances, but this lovely town was worth every rotation of the pedal. It sits atop of a hill that is almost 1,000 feet above the main road through this area (and pedaling that at dusk after ten hours of riding is tough, thankful for Ryan's patience:-). We opted for a room in town to enjoy this beautiful and unique place, which of course took another hour to find as the entire town inside the walls was booked. What are the chances of that on a Sunday? There was much history and amazing views which we were fortunate to see at night as well as the next day. Little stairways led randomly through the town, more cafe's, pizza restaurants, an old church, it was simply slendid. This is actually the town where the Twilight series was filmed.

From Montepulciano we carried on through the rolling hills for a few days before reaching Rome. We were a bit nervous about riding our way into Rome as there are many horror stories about drives and moto's. To our surprise, it wasn't that tough. There were fairly big shoulders and the drivers weren't that crazy. I guess after riding in Portugal, we are up for most of anything as the Portuguese as they are the cowboy's of the road. Finding a campsite on the outskirts of the city and along the train line, we didn't have to ride our bikes and could just stroll through the city. Getting off the train and stepping outside, there was garbage everywhere. I simply could not believe that the city was so dirty. Fortunately, a block or two later, it was a differenct world. People crossing the streets everywhere, bikes, cars, motos, it was a bustling city with history and architecture to keep us busy for a few days. As always, we walked the streets for hours and got ourselves lost until our legs were aching. I'm not sure if it's all of the hype about Rome or simply because we are not huge fans of big touristy cities, but I wasn't completely overwhelmed by Rome. I did enjoy seeing all of the sites, but I think the mass crowds of toursits must have been a reason to not fall in love with such an old city.

With a nasty cold and garbage everywhere, we headed south from Rome and couldn't wait to catch the ferry to Greece. The ride through Naples to Pompei was possibly the worst ride of our trip. Riding over cobblestone streets, which is extremely unpleasant onto itself, let alone with a pounding headache and fever, I couldn't wait to get out of Italy. Ryan even got pelted with rocks by teenage kids on schooters. It was pretty awful. Initially we were excited to experience southern Italy as people said it was really authentic, but we just couldn't wait to leave. There were heaps of trash, terrible drivers, and the vibratations when riding over the cobblestone was intense. After riding across the heel of the boot, we caught a ferry out of Brindisi to Patras, Greece.