Italy Day 8: Part 1:: Biking from Perugia to Castiglione del Lago

This is one of a series of entries from my travel diary of our Italy trip last fall. This entry is from Day 8, September 22, 2009, our second day of cycling:

9/22/08: Perugia to Castiglione del Lago: 25 Miles
I just got out of one of the best showers of my life. I think the shower alone was worth the hotel room. Tons of hot water, big fluffy towels (which are not that common in Italy, where thinner non-fluffy towels are more common). After 25 miles of hill country biking and all afternoon exploring around town and climbing the castle with the kids, I was really ready for a good shower.

This was a terrifically beautiful day - fair and warm with big puffy clouds and a nice breeze. We left a little late after situating all of the gear for the first time in the trailers. Going down off the big hill of Perugia was fun and a little scary, especially when we rocketed into a tunnel, still wearing our sunglasses! Back down at the train station, we stopped for groceries at the Coop (pronounced Co-ope) store. The bikes attracted the first of many onlookers, and older gentleman who only spoke Italian and French. This was a bonus for me, since French was the first foreign language I learned, it's often the case that the first word that pops into my head when I'm reaching for the Italian word is French anyways. Between the two languages we managed to have quite a conversation about the bikes and our route to Firenze (Florence).

Despite the fact that drivers here are fast and zip in and out of lanes like crazy while using their horns profusely, they have been everything from polite to incredibly enthusiastic to us. Even when we are totally in the way, no one has honked at us except in a friendly "beep beep" way with a wave or a thumbs-up. One family pulled up by us and enthused in rapid Italian saying "Complimento" over and over. I have not felt nervous or afraid on the bikes here, despite no bike lanes and the closeness of cars, trucks, and buses. I find myself wishing that American drivers could all take a crash course in Italian cycling hospitality!

Our route from Perugia to Castiglione del Lago went southwest over some rolling hills. The sign for hills here looks like, well, a pair of breasts, and quickly earned the knickname "Boobs Ahead" from the Biking Clevenger Family. Soon there were familiar groans when we spotted another Boobs Ahead sign, knowing that meant another hill to climb. Most of them have been mild and rolling hills though, nothing too serious yet. We turned north toward a small town called Mugnano, and off of the main road.

We stopped for a picnic lunch in the shade of some olive trees by the side of the road. After lunch we set off again, went past Mugnano and some fields with grains and sunflowers, then up and over a small pass. From the top of the pass, we could see Lake Trasimeno below us. There was also a small shrine with the Madonna and Jesus at the top of the pass. We have seen several of these soo far, usually at the summit of a pass or hill. Maybe she watches over cyclists offering up their prayers to make it up the hills.

We descended to the road along the shore and followed it along the south and western ends of the lake, stopping to take some photos at a small park along the way. A nice person offered to take a family photo of us, which shows how pretty this spot was. From the park, we could see the town of Castiglione del Lago to the north, jutting out into the lake on a promontory of rock, with the castle at the very tip standing over the lake. It looked a long ways off in the distance, but that's our destination for today.

On the way into town, we passed this place:
and I assured the family that I had not booked us into "Casa del Mutilato" for our night's stay. We reached the old walled part of the city, and the bells of the church began to toll solemnly over and over. As I walked up the main street into the Centro to find our hotel, people in dark clothing began to file out of the church bearing flowers and then a casket. We waited until the funeral procession wound away down the street before we walked the bikes up to our hotel.

Our hotel, La Torre, looks wonderful. It is very close to the castle which has the kids excited of course. The owner (Signore Lucarelli, here in this photo with Wayne and the kids) has been extremely helpful and friendly, especially considering that the hotel is on many floors with not much room to store such large bicycles and trailer/suitcases. As Wayne did some maintenance on the squeaky trailer wheels, a small crowd again grew around the bikes, including a family from Germany who asked a lot of questions about the bikes and our itinerary. Signore Lucarelli found us a place in a courtyard across the street to safely store our bikes and trailers, so we are all settled in and ready to see the town and castle. Castiglione Del Lago literally means "castle of the lake", and one reason we wanted to come here is the beautifully picturesque castle at the end of town here. The kids are very excited to go explore!
Continued in part 2...

Italia Day 7: Biking Side Trip to Assisi

This is one of a series of entries from my travel diary of our Italy trip last fall. This entry is from Day 7, September 21, 2009, our first day of cycling:

9/21/08 Perugia to Assisi and back: 30 miles

Today we decided to ride the bikes to Assisi without pulling the trailers, just to shake everything down before we head out tomorrow towing everything along. We didn't really have a route picked out since we didn't plan on biking this part, but between the maps I brought along and the GPS we muddled through, only hitting a couple of snags along the way near the big freeway because there's only a few places that you can cross it.



After we descended down the enormous hill that Perugia sits on (knowing we'd have to come back up - gulp!) we could easily see Assisi on the hill across the valley. There was a headwind most of the way and only one short but steep hill in between. Between towns along the way were olive groves and fields of sunflowers that were already drying now in late Sepgember. You could imagine how beautiful they'd be in full bloom. We decided not to try to bike up the steep road to Assisi but parked our bikes at a parking lot at the bottom where they leave the tour busses and we walked up.

Assisi was a beautiful little town, lots of small picturesque streets and lovely views in every side out over the Umbrian country below. We went to the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi, which is a fascinating place. I wish I could've taken photos inside but it is a very holy place and no photography allowed. The basilica is built on a hill on two levels: an upper basilica and a lower basilica, right over the top of each other. It was begun in 1228, immediately after St. Francis was canonized and only a couple of years after he died. Pope Gregory IX himself laid the cornerstone. St. Francis' tomb is here beneath the church and is the aim of a steady stream of pilgrims.

To me, this is the one Catholic saint that I was very interested in visiting. Patron saint of nature and of animals, Italy's first poet, and founder of the Franciscan order, he went against the overbearing opulence of his day and lived in poverty working with lepers and preaching to common folk. He wrote in his own Umbrian dialect, not in Latin, so that common people could understand his words. The kids and I read several books about St. Francis including Brother Sun, Sister Moon: The Life and Stories of St. Francis and his own hymn set to pictures, Cancticle of the Sun. The basilicas are frescoed with scenes of his life and death, including one of him receiving the stigmata which looked like laser beams were shooting him from heaven - that required a fair bit of explaining to the kids, who were not familiar with the idea of stigmata and were wondering why God would want to shoot poor St. Francis. On the lawn outside the basilica, the word PAX is spelled out in clipped hedges and inside is a big wooden sign painted with the word Peace in many different languages.



After visiting the basilicas, we stopped for pizza in a small place on an empty street, watched nuns go in and out of a convent up the road, and watched the local dogs, cats, and pigeons roaming the city. The kids have taken more photos of pigeons than anything else in Italy. Their photo albums will look like "The pigeons of Rome. The pigeons of Perugia. The pigeons of Assisi. The pigeons of Firenze"

After wandering the lovely and mostly empty streets of Assisi, in the afternoon we biked back to Perugia. We knew it would be quite a climb back up to the town and we ended up pushing the bikes up the steepest parts, but it was fine. It took us about four hours total to go the 30 miles round trip including all of our stops and detours.

Tonight we ate dinner at a little place down the street from our hotel. Eating "early" (7:30) here has the advantage of a nearly empty restaurant. We ended up next to a couple from Calgary who were very nice and we chatted with them for quite awhile. And now with plenty of food, I'm feeling tired and ready to turn in. 30 miles on the tandems feels more like 40 or 50 by myself (especially with pushing up those hills).

Italia Day 5: Roma: The Vatican

It's been awhile since I posted one of these. Here's the journal entry from our 5th day in Rome. I start off with an example of jet lag in action:

Wayne: "Where are my socks??"
Us: "You're holding them in your hand."
Wayne: "How did they get there?"

And a quote from Asa while we were walking: "How far is it to those sixteen chapels anyways?"

It was about 2 miles from our apartment near the Pantheon, as it turns out. This photo is of the bridge of Castel Sant'Angelo, where we crossed the Tevere (Tiber) river.


So on to the Vatican. Today is a rainy day in Rome and I discovered that my rain jacket doesn't work all that well. I got soaked on the walk over. Luckily the body heat generated by the 80,000 people crammed into St. Peter's (the line went around the entire piazza) quickly dried us off. St. Peter's itself was so overwhelming it was underwhelming in a way: so big, so much decoration, and unfortunately so many people that it was hard to feel impressed, strange as that might seem. Probably if you arrived in November and it was nearly empty (if it ever is, anymore) then it would be more affecting. The kids were fascinated by the Swiss Guards in their colorful uniforms, especially when they changed over with much hoopla and presenting of arms. The thing that I found to be the most affecting was really that it hits home that Peter was a real person, who really died and was buried there. And he was a disciple of Christ. So I guess in a way it made all of the Bible stories I learned as a kid that much more real, just being able to stand there in that place. All the fancy swirling decor on the altar is so much frosting on the cake, but Peter was a real person and he's really buried there.

We ate lunch from our backpack under the great columnade at the edge of the Piazza, protected from the rain at least. The kids took a hundred more photos of The Pigeons of Rome, which will figure prominently in their personal photo albums. After lunch we mailed some postcards and got ready to trek through the rain to the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican museums, which are actually a good ways away from St. Peters.

The Sistine Chapel was definitely truly amazing. The scope and talent and creativity displayed by Michelangelo there is really overwhelming, especially considering he was pretty new to the whole fresco business not to mention still fairly young. I'm glad we got to see the ceiling post-restoration because the vibrant colors make the whole thing so much more affecting. It doesn't really come across much in photos, it's of course hard to capture the scope and the enormous amounts of detail. (Post trip note: Michelangelo: The Vatican Frescoes is the best book I've found, incredibly thorough with gorgeous photographs and lengthy descriptions, history, and explanations of each part of the ceiling frescoes.) I could've easily stayed another hour or more just taking it all in. I also noted that there were several nursing toddlers and nursing older children pictured, although I have heard that some of those nursing breasts were covered up in the pre-restoration ceiling for "modesty".

We also went through the rest of the Vatican museums. The kids really loved the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman galleries, and we got the audio tour which they always love. The museum itself has little in the way of explanations or presentation of the artifacts, so without the audio tour you'd be left guessing about the details of anything there. It did make me appreciate the trend in American museums in the last 30 years or so toward more interactive exhibits with description and presentation all helping to give some context to what you're seeing. Between all of the different exhibits there at the Vatican, it's huge of course and takes hours to wind through all of the galleries, it's pretty mind-boggling. Note to parents who might bring young kids there, once you start down the one-way U-shaped museum wings, there's no easy outs. And no bathrooms either that we noticed.

Personally I liked the sculpture gallery best. I had a flashback to art history class at several points. Suddenly statues that you've only seen on slides or pages of a book are right there in front of you. I especially loved seeing Laocoon and his sons with the serpent. I was always struck by the emotion in that statue and its so much more affecting in person. Asa too found it to be very sad. She really loved the sculpture gallery of the animals, taking lots of photos there. Mackenzie especially liked the statues pertaining to Greek mythology. They were both very engaged and patient considering that we were on our feet for about 7.5 straight hours. Good thing these kids have stamina!

The kids got a kick out of these signs. Italians seem to love to use signs with drawings instead of a lot of text. I'm sure it helps in such a place where people come to visit from so many different cultures and languages. But this particular sign started our trend of purposeful misinterpretation. The kids dubbed this one "Nose Picking Allowed" and "Funky Dancers on Stairs"


Tonight we went for some great pizza on one of the small streets near our apartment. Now we're packing up to leave Rome tomorrow and head to Perugia!

Italy Day 2: Roma: Paths of the Ancients

Note: This is part of an ongoing series of diary entries and photos from our trip to Italy this fall. You can see all the journal entries here
What an amazing day, about twelve hours of walking around and my feet are actually a bit sore. This morning we walked down to the Piazza Venezia with the gorgeous towering building with the statues of chariots on top, and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Inside was a military museum, which we browsed through. Along the way, we stopped to watch a traffic cop in action on this amazingly chaotic multi-way intersection. It was like watching an orchestra conductor in the middle of a big symphony. We loved how he had everything from horses and carriages to the scooter mob to big buses to wave on through.


From there, we headed off to the Colosseum, but it was totally mobbed, so we diverted to the Palatine Hill. Near the Colosseum, Asa bought a bright green parasol, which she would end up carrying everywhere and loved dearly. Since she sunburns easily, that was a great purchase for her. I could've spent all day on the Palatino among the ruins and the cyprus trees. It was so peaceful, especially after the constant roar of Roma's traffic. There are so many different structures standing up here, from houses to athletic courts, things were built here then torn down and built over, repeatedly over the centuries.


From there we walked down the side of the hill to the Fora Romana and all of the amazing ruins there. One of the buildings there that was the most interesting was a church they built right onto a temple. This kind of recycling was common in ancient Rome. The Pantheon used to be a Roman temple, the marble from the Colisseum was carted off to use in other structures. Everything gets turned into something else, used for something else, or built over the top of. Of course, the kids were really enthralled with this little flourescent-spotted lizards that lived among the ruins, and we spent a good deal of time trying to catch one (they're much more devious than the blue-bellies that I have no trouble capturing back home), but at least I got a photo.

The kids enjoyed just walking among the ruins, and Mackenzie was especially taken with the fact that Julius Caesar's tomb is right there in the Forum Romanum, in a small stone hut. We stood there for quite awhile with sunlight streaming in upon the gravesite. It's one thing to read about Roman history, it's another thing to stand right there in the middle of where it all happened. Though the ruins are impressive, they're so...well...ruinous (and have been since before Alaric sacked the place), that it's hard to imagine what many of the buildings originally looked like. But to think that you're standing right next to the remains of Julius Caesar, I guess that makes it all a bit more real.

I think my favorite part of the Forum was probably the Temple of the Vestal Virgins. The reflective ponds are overgrown, and some of the statues are headless, but there's a peaceful, gardenlike feeling there and you can imagine how it might've looked in its day. Its overgrown with wild roses and asters.

On the way back to the apartment, we bought groceries at the nearest store on the way home. It's very different there from the big-box model of grocery stores that are more common in the U.S. The grocery stores in Roma have small storefronts, and then inside are like a little warren of rooms. One room is fruits and veggies, another room is crackers and cookies, another is the meat and cheeses, etc. You go through them in order, one leading to the next, and you pop out at the cash register, and when you exit the building, you're just next door to where you started.


At the apartment, it was time for dinner and a short nap. That's the nice thing about being really close to everything, since after dinner we took a stroll to the Trevi fountain, which is really pretty at night, and we got some gelato on the way back. The gelato place right around the corner from our apartment is wonderful, handmaking the gelato right there. They also have a small adorable fluffy dog that hangs out behind the counter, that Asa of course got to pet. Mackenzie cracked me up at the Trevi fountain by tossing his coin so enthusiastically over his shoulder that it bounced off an upper ledge and nearly hit him in the back of the head. Asa stood with her coin clutched in her hands and her eyes shut tight with such concentration that I could practically see her visualizing her farm with its stable of horses and 83 small fluffy dogs.

Home Again

We're back home, semi-coherent at best. Having gotten approximately seven hours of sleep in the last 48 hours, I'm just about shattered and am going to kick off to bed soon. Last night I went to sleep pretty easily, but then woke at 1:30. Just as I was knocking back off asleep at 4:00 am, the kids woke up. {sigh}. Jet lag sucks. Next time I swear I'm going to try the melatonin thing.

But, our trip was just wonderful. Rome, the biking, Tuscany, Firenze (Florence), Siena, Pisa, the Cinque Terra, all just marvelous. Well worth the jet lag and then some. I journaled every day we were there, and took about 3,500 photographs, so I decided I will just type in my journal entries here along with photos as I sort through them. So I can share our journey in a time-delayed fashion, since we didn't bring a laptop along to blog along the way.

So after two days back in Oregon, here's just a few observations about things I really loved about Italy and things I missed about home:

Loved:

The train system. Totally amazing. No doubt about it, the US needs to be moving in this direction. The trains were on time, fast, smooth, efficient, easy to get tickets for, and very reasonably priced. Even the Eurostar, which we splurged on for our last leg of the journey only cost us 80 Euro for our whole family from Florence to Rome (and at 155 mph as clocked by our GPS, it was worth it for the "wow" factor!)

Missed:

Free toilets and drinking fountains. Toilets cost as much as one Euro per person (making a pee stop for a family of four into an almost $6.00 affair with the exchange rate what it is)! Drinking fountains are almost non-existant except some spigots in the piazzas.

Loved:

Italian drivers were the epitome of courtesy to us as we were cycling. Actually, I love the whole way that traffic flows seamlessly there with the drivers aware of what others are doing around them. It might look chaotic at first to an American eye, but it makes total sense. In 165 miles of biking, we never had a driver be anything but polite to us.

Missed:

Roads without traffic. Other than the dirt backroads that we took, most roads had far more cars on them than rural roads here.

Loved:

Fresh local produce everywhere. The nectarines were to die for - right off the tree and so ripe.

Missed:

Real breakfast. I can't exist on a croissant and black coffee, especially not when biking four hours a day!

Loved:

The agriculture integrated into every little nook and cranny. Kitchen gardens, even in front of apartment buildings with huge trellises of tomatoes and rows of herbs and peppers. Fence lines covered with grape vines. Olive trees everywhere.

Missed:

Trees in the city. The cities there are very densely populated, which makes them compact and very easily walkable, which is great! But I missed the trees that cover our town. Coming back, our city just looked so incredibly lush and green and lovely, especially now that many trees are starting to turn.

All in all, it was hard to come back, but I was looking forward to it as well. Italy is a lovely country with warm and friendly people and gorgeous scenery, history, and culture. I hope to return some day, for sure. But we stayed just enough time to start getting homesick and I'm glad to be back with our garden and animals and friends here too.

Italy Update #2

Hi all, just a quick update from Arezzo, halfway through our biking trip. So far everything has gone just perfectly. The weather here has been unseasonably cool, which basically means not nearly as roasting hot as it usually is here right now. So it's been perfect for biking. Our routes have all gone well, with an occasional assist from the GPS and a few unplanned detours, but all fun. We've biked lots of backroads through vineyards, sunflower fields, and around Lake Trasimeno. The towns have been just beautiful little jewels of medieval streets, castles, and churches. The kids have been doing great, we've gone over 100 miles so far, they are absolutely loving it! We have three more days of biking, and then it's on to Florence, Pisa, and the Cinque Terra for some relaxing last few days.

So far, we've biked through Perugia, Asissi, Castiglione del Lago, Cortona, and Arezzo. On to San Giovanni Valdarno, Pontessieve, and Firenze. People everywhere are extremely gracious and enthusiastic about our bikes. Lots of "Bravo!"s shouted from passing cars, house and store windows, and other cyclists, and occasional crowds gathered asking questions when we stop. I'm grateful I learned enough Italian to communicate, and I've found that I can make myself understood quite well (nice surprise). Motorists here are great toward bikes.

Our hotels have all been terrific, and the people who run them extremely gracious(especially about finding a place to put our huge bike contraptions). All in all, things couldn't be better, it is the trip of a lifetime for sure!