Brisighella – Riveted

Venice to Florence Video Tour

Laura Domela — Thu, 29 May 2014 03:05:00 +0000

Kevin made us a cool YouTube channel playlist that has all the videos he put together of our bike tour from Venice to Florence (including the first couple days in Venice mostly on boats, but it sets a nice mood for the rest of the bike tour and it's one of my favorite, actually, even though there are no bikes). I thought I'd put a link to it here in case you wanted a convenient place to get to the videos (and also so I can find it later, because this blog is like my own personal notebook sometimes. I forget things and need to look them up. Whatever. Shut up.)

These videos are quite nice (and I plan to watch them all over again from the start the minute we get home, or maybe right now).

Coolest trip I've ever done. Honestly.

Oh yeah, also: All of these were shot on an iPhone, mostly while riding a bike!

Brisighella to Florence (Video)

Laura Domela — Mon, 19 May 2014 08:23:00 +0000

Here's Kevin's video of the last day of our bike tour (Day 6!) from Venice to Florence. This is the leg from Brisighella to Florence (with a train ride at the beginning):

"This was the sixth leg of a multi-day Eurobike tour from Venice to Florence – riding Bike Friday folding bikes. This leg (34 km biking) left Brisighella by loading the bikes onto a train traveling over the mountain to Borgo San Lorenzo, then biking through the remainder of the mountains over some steep hills, and descending down into Florence through Fiesole. This was by far the hilliest segment of the tour – with some 13% uphill grade, some steep descents, and about 1500 ft of elevation gain. Descending into Florence by bike via this route is amazingly beautiful."

Finally, Florence!

Laura Domela — Sat, 17 May 2014 00:08:00 +0000

Today was the last day (Day 6) of our bike tour, and we both agree it's been one of the coolest things we've ever done. There's just no better way to see and get a feel for a place than to ride bikes through it. I also think the way we did it, on our own bikes with regular clothes (well, bike shorts hidden underneath, of course) helped the "fitting in" feeling we were going for.

We got up earlier than usual in Brisighella this morning because we opted to catch the 8:30am train to Borgo San Lorenzo (instead of the 12:30pm train). We waffled at first because we thought we might want to spend more time in Brisighella, but since we arrived on the early side yesterday we got to explore plenty!

At the train station in Brisighella with our NZ pals (another group of 6 doing the same ride):

Here's a map of our ride (starting with the train ride from Brisighella to Borgo San Lorenzo — click to enlarge):

The train ride to Borgo San Lorenzo (through the Apenine mountains that divide Emiglia Romagna and Tuscany) was about an hour. We had four tickets…one for each of us, and one for each of our bikes. Taking the bike on the train felt a little wonky. The train doors open and there's the spot between the area where people sit (separated by doors), with steep stairs going down either side, and you just hoist your bike up and park it there, hoping it won't fall over when the train moves. Two of our other tour mates had their Eurobike bikes in there and we all just tried to arrange them so they wouldn't fall over and they wouldn't block the doors (the doors that were on all four sides!)

Shots from the train ride:

In Borgo San Lorenzo:

That's the only photo I took of riding through Borgo San Lorenzo. It was pretty, but we needed some espresso.

We knew were were going to have some climbs today and figured the fuel would do us good. Back on the road:

When you're leaving a town you get those signs (above) that have the name of the town with a red slash through it.

Alrighty, and now on to those climbs!!

We gave it a shot but after not too long we ended up walking the bikes up this 1.5km 13% grade (and even that was pretty tough!)

Water break next to the roadside shrine:

Oh yeah, here's a screen shot from my iPhone running Cyclemeter:

It kinda felt like straight up. After the 1.5km straight up, there was some downhill, and then another 3km or so of uphill, but not as steep as the first climb so we were able to actually stay on our bikes. All in all the climbing today was about 463 meters, or 1,519 feet. But take a look at that view from the top…Fiesole in the foreground, and Florence in the background. Nice!

Coming into Fiesole:

We stopped here for more espresso and some acqua frizzante (fizzy water, but you probably got that).

Oh, and the view was this:

We continued on a bit looking for our lunch spot and opted for this little sidewalk spot called Fiesolano:

We had some pizza and a glass of house vino rosso and more fizzy water, and then continued down the hill toward Florence.

This is an incredibly scenic ride, from Fiesole (or above it, really) down into Florence. Pictures do not even begin to capture how breathtaking it is to arrive in Florence via this route by bicycle.

Narrow road, with a traffic light at either end:

Separated bike lane. All of the parts of Italy we've seen so far are more bike-friendly than we'd imagined they would be. In busy areas though, there are bikes wheel-to-wheel chained to that fence on the right so that they stick a bit out into the right side and you have to ride on the left. Perhaps some better bike parking is in order?

We lost our sticker path for a while, but worked it out via our Cyclemeter map and Google maps and eventually found the stickers AND our hotel. We're at Hotel Grifone for our first night here and this is the view from our room:

See the Duomo, right between the tip tops of that tall tree! Neat!

Our room has giant, openable window:

And here's the view now, after my long long blog post:

Beautiful. Tomorrow we'll move over to the apartment we've rented for the rest of our stay in Florence. It's in the Oltrarno area (across the Arno river from the center of town and the Duomo, so a little quieter than the main tourist area). It should be lovely. We'll let you know!

Ravenna to Brisighella (Video)

Laura Domela — Fri, 16 May 2014 15:00:00 +0000

This was the fifth leg of a multi-day Eurobike tour from Venice to Florence – riding Bike Friday folding bikes. This leg (56 km) left Ravenna and went through farmland, vineyards, kiwi and cherry orchards, and small towns and villages on the way to beautiful Brisighella.

Ravenna to Brisighella (Ride Day 5)

Laura Domela — Fri, 16 May 2014 13:38:06 +0000

Well, we're in Florence now, so again I'm behind a day. First, I'll take care of yesterday, then I'll post about our ride today, cool? Cool.

After breakfast in the hotel, we left Ravenna and were treated to more back roads and great weather. We rode past cherry orchards, vineyards, kiwi orchards, corn fields…and more crops we couldn't identify.

Oh yeah, here's a map. See that last part there? Those are some hills!

And here are pics from the ride:

Eurobike stickers say "turn right."

But I kinda want to go left!

Once we got to Faenza, we stopped and had some lunch at a busy pizzeria just inside town. SUCH good pizza! We ordered two small pizzas — one tartufo (bufala, mushrooms, truffle oil) and an "Italia" special (bresaola, raddicchio, parmesan, bufala, tomatoes…not baked, more like a salad on top of a thin crust). Both were delicious!

Riding through Faenza:

We stopped for a quick caffè before heading on out of town:

Back on the road:

We arrived in Brisighella and checked into our hotel (Hotel La Meridiana). We took showers, did a little work, and then headed out (again on the bikes! crazy!) up the hilly roads into the town of Brisighella.

Brisighella is the smallest town we stayed in all week (about 7,700 residents). You can read some about the town here in this article we found online when we were doing some research.

Exploring Brisighella:

Brisighella is surrounded by (backed by?) three tall craggy chalk spires, topped with (1) the Sanctuary of Monticino (religious), (2) the 14th-century Castle Manfrediana (military), and (3) the 13th-century clock tower, the Torre dell’Orologio (civic) that strikes the quarter hour all day long. You can see the clock tower in the two photos below:

The famous Via Degli Asini translates to "Street of the Asses", and is so named because donkeys once used it traveling to and from the chalk quarry up above.

The via is covered now, and houses business and apartments (that first open door was a dentist's office):

Via Degli Asini, from the street below:

We sat and had a glass of prosecco and people-watched for a bit. We also stopped in the tourism office and grabbed a map. The helpful woman inside told us all about the famous Brisighella olive oil (seriously, see same article referenced above re: olive oil), and then she led us down a few doors to a shop where we were greeted by Daniela. "Her English is very good, you can ask her anything" the tourist info woman told us, but then Daniela never spoke one word of English to us, which was fine…just funny in response to such an introduction. Daniela let us taste two different olive oils from Brisighella.

Pieve Tho was the first oil we tried, made from olives from several different Brisighella growing areas. (The three are Nostrana di Brisighella, Ghiacciola, and Orfana.)

The second oil we tasted was the Brisighello DOP (our favorite, and the one we bought):

"The trademark "Brisighello" is related to a specific region with peculiar features, different from the surrounding areas, and mainly from an unique variety of olive fruit, the "Nostrana of Brisighella".

The extra virgin olive oil "Brisighello" DOP can only be obtained by the above mentioned variety of fruit, and its percentage cannot be less than ninety percent. Small amounts of other fruits coming from local olive trees can also be added." (from Brisighella.org)

We also bought one jar of tartufata that we will probably eat while we're in our apartment in Florence over the next two weeks.

Our bikes and the street, taken from the Via Degli Asini (and that's the spot on the left where we hung out with our prosecco for an hour or so before dinner):

This was the view from our little prosecco spot, where we had a very nice dreadlocked server and got to listento a reggae soundtrack

We did a little research about where to have dinner and, well, that article I linked to above really convinced us to try La Cavallina.

We are so glad we did! We arrived early (7:30pm) and decided to sit outside. We had this view:

The owner came out and explained the whole menu to us slowly in Italian but with hand gestures (shellfish, this big, round…a scallop!) and a few English words. It was so charming. We ordered a bottle of a fantastic local wine he recommended, Iaia (so fantastic we bought another bottle to take with us on to Florence…also, it's biodynamically produced — bonus!):

The owner helped us decide on some dishes, telling us he had an extra antipasti not on the menu that he wanted us to order — a formaggio di capra (goat cheese) that he made himself (it was garnished with an olive relish, thin green beans, and shaved parmesan, and it was incredible!):

We also had a beef tartare with shaved truffles, salad, and toasted bread (battuta al coltello di razza Romagnola con tartufo di stagione e pane brioches)…

… a local pasta dish (passatelli asciutti su fonduta diu formaggio e tartufo), a veal dish, and a fish dish (filetto di orata in crosta di erbe aromatiche su crema di sedano rapa e tartar di olive) which was an herb-encrusted sea bream with a celery puree and an olive "salsa".

They brought us a "surprise" dessert, a light pannacotta with strawberries, and two glasses of grappa. Everything was incredible, but the special goat cheese dish was our declared winner.

We rode our bikes back to the hotel from the restaurant (9:30pm-ish) with our nice bright headlights and taillights, carrying in my handlebar bag (1) a bottle of Iaia Sangiovese from Brisighella, a bottle of Brisighella olive oil, and a jar of tartufata. The moon was bright and almost full, and the three craggy pillars were lit up and shining tall above the town.

Buonanotte Brisighella! Domani…Firenze!