Sunday, September 13, 2009
Giorno Due
After getting in late last night, Angela and I quick got a room in Bellagio, hit a ristorante, and on the way back to the hotel had our first (and definitely not the last) gelato experience. Yummy! We headed back to the room and both passed out within minutes.
We slept in today. It had been a long journey getting here (air miles are great, but they don't get you a direct flight from Bend to Milan). Our room at the Hotel Barchetta (any Rush fans out there?) is quite nice - a comfortable bed, a balcony over the restaurant, a cute little kid named Omar running around (I think his parents run the place), and most importantly, it has a great shower. Not big, but tall, hot, and it has pressure. I know we shouldn't expect this the rest of the trip, but it is nice.
After waking up and getting ready, we went down for breakfast. Very orangish scrambled eggs were a little weird, but the bacon was good as was the bread and chocolate pastry were delicious. We found an internet cafe and downloaded our ride into my Garmin 705 GPS. I love this thing.
We climbed straight from our hotel, and I mean right away! We rode along the lake for about 500 ft to get around town then took a left and started the ascent to the Madonna del Ghisallo. It wasn't a hard climb, but was pretty steep at the beginning, with a lot of 12-14% grades and a shit load of hairpins. We got up to the little chapel that is filled with bike memorabilia and then checked out the museum as well. They had a lot of cool old bikes in there. After about an hour we jumped back on the bikes and headed down towards Asso. The sky spit on us for about 15-20 minutes, but it wasn't too bad and then we started climbing again which actually made it kind of nice. The elevation here is quite low - I think we started around 900ft or so - and the top of the highest climb was 3675 ft - just about the elevation of Bend. So this is a great place to start our riding in Italy because it is getting us warmed up for the bigger, higher climbs to come. We finished the ride with a great decent back down to lake Como, then rode along the lake for the last 13km. It was a great 35 mile ride (it shows 32, but I forgot to turn my GPS on after the museum for about 3 miles). Time to go get a coke and some food. Buon Serra!
We slept in today. It had been a long journey getting here (air miles are great, but they don't get you a direct flight from Bend to Milan). Our room at the Hotel Barchetta (any Rush fans out there?) is quite nice - a comfortable bed, a balcony over the restaurant, a cute little kid named Omar running around (I think his parents run the place), and most importantly, it has a great shower. Not big, but tall, hot, and it has pressure. I know we shouldn't expect this the rest of the trip, but it is nice.
After waking up and getting ready, we went down for breakfast. Very orangish scrambled eggs were a little weird, but the bacon was good as was the bread and chocolate pastry were delicious. We found an internet cafe and downloaded our ride into my Garmin 705 GPS. I love this thing.
We climbed straight from our hotel, and I mean right away! We rode along the lake for about 500 ft to get around town then took a left and started the ascent to the Madonna del Ghisallo. It wasn't a hard climb, but was pretty steep at the beginning, with a lot of 12-14% grades and a shit load of hairpins. We got up to the little chapel that is filled with bike memorabilia and then checked out the museum as well. They had a lot of cool old bikes in there. After about an hour we jumped back on the bikes and headed down towards Asso. The sky spit on us for about 15-20 minutes, but it wasn't too bad and then we started climbing again which actually made it kind of nice. The elevation here is quite low - I think we started around 900ft or so - and the top of the highest climb was 3675 ft - just about the elevation of Bend. So this is a great place to start our riding in Italy because it is getting us warmed up for the bigger, higher climbs to come. We finished the ride with a great decent back down to lake Como, then rode along the lake for the last 13km. It was a great 35 mile ride (it shows 32, but I forgot to turn my GPS on after the museum for about 3 miles). Time to go get a coke and some food. Buon Serra!
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