Eurobike – 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!

Packing up the Bikes

Laura Domela — Wed, 28 May 2014 18:28:51 +0000

So sad, but it had to be done — we packed the bikes into their suitcases today (Wednesday). We have a morning flight out of Florence on Friday, the pre-wedding cocktail party was tonight, the wedding is tomorrow at 12:30pm and the reception and dinner afterwards…so, not a lot of time to deal with packing and stuff.

Here they are pre-disassembly with their accompanying suitcases:

This was only the second time we'd put them into the suitcases (the first time was at home in Portland…they've been in full bike mode ever since we got to Venice) and we rocked it. Smooth, fast, and the lid closed on the first try. Woohoo!

All ready to go!

We took a big bag of clothes and stuff over to the Mailboxes, Etc. in Florence (yep, they have one) and mailed it home. About $100, but an overweight bag (if we could fit everything in it) would be about the same price (with some added stress and hassle), and an additional bag would be more than double that (about $260, plus you'd have to buy an extra bag), so we happily took the ship-it-home route.

We lugged our bag of stuff across the river, only to show up at the front door of the shipping shop during the hours they were closed. (Typical for the area and maybe the whole country, many shops are closed for a few hours in the middle of the day.) They would reopen at 3:30pm (it was 2:30) so we went and had some lunch and coffee down the road a bit to burn an hour. At 3:30 the shop promptly reopened and we were in and out in about 4 minutes.

Once back at the apartment getting ready for the 5pm cocktail party (just a block away), I got an email from the guy at the shop that I'd left my passport there (when he was photocopying it). Oops. We didn't have time to go get it today before the party (plus I didn't want to hightail it across town in 4-inch heels and an ostrich feather skirt!), so we'll pop over there in the morning when they open at 9am to retrieve it (wearing tennies and jeans).

The wedding guests meet tomorrow at 12:30pm in front of Neptune's Fountain outside the Palazzo Vecchio and I'm certain it will be an incredible day. The cocktail party tonight was lovely — great people, incredible location (the Palazzo Ricasoli, I mentioned yesterday where we started our walking tour). After the party, we stopped to see if we could get into one of the restaurants that was full last night and got right in (15 minutes earlier makes a huge difference)– a place just down our street called Olio e Convivium, and it was very nice — good food, cool interior, and fabulous service! So many great places to eat and drink in this neighborhood!

Hey, look at this!!

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!

Comacchio to Ravenna (Video)

Laura Domela — Thu, 15 May 2014 03:06:46 +0000

Kevin's video from yesterday's ride!

This was the fourth leg of a multi-day Eurobike tour from Venice to Florence – riding Bike Friday folding bikes. This leg (72 km) left Comacchio and went through the Parco Regionale del Delta del Po – Much of the trip was off pavement – gravel and dirt roads and some single-track. We saw wild flamingoes in the wildlife refuge, and people fishing with nets on the Reno river. (Here's a link that explains this ancient method of fishing called Trabucco.)

Working Our Way to Ravenna (Ride Day 4)

Laura Domela — Wed, 14 May 2014 17:59:41 +0000

We were the last ones to leave the hotel in Comacchio (our favorite so far) this morning and we were the first ones to arrive in Ravenna. We know, it's not The Amazing Race or anything, but still…we rocked it today. We rode 72 kilometers — about 45 miles, and a lot of those miles were on pretty tough dirt and gravel roads or paths — on Bike Friday folding bikes, from Comacchio to Ravenna. Also, we stayed up until 1am last night working in our hotel room in Comacchio, then got up at 7am and did some more work before lugging our luggage downtairs and grabbing a quick breakfast and heading out on the bikes. Today's map:

This is the first time in over 10 years we've been able to work this little while traveling, thanks to our awesome team who is keeping the company running smoothly while we're in Italy. One of the big compromises we made in starting a company was that we are always working. In the 10.5 years since we started our company we have probably never had a single day completely "off" (including weekend days). It seems there's always some business to tend to, and usually several hours worth. While the kind of business we decided to start has been awesome in allowing us the freedom to travel, that's come at the price of never truly being "on vacation".

Okay, on to today's ride, which took us through the Parco Regionale del Delta del Po where there are hundreds of flamingoes! In the wild!

4 or so km of this two-rut dirt road…with many many sticker bushes pushing into your rut:

All those white dots out there (plus a zillion more out of frame)? Flamingoes. See, Airstream peeps…we're thinking about you!

More dirt and gravel:

Check out all these fishing cabins and shacks along the Reno River. There's a cool net system that is lowered down into the river where it sits for a bit, then is raised back up to check for fish. We stopped here for about 15 minutes to watch a fishing operation and almost every time they pulled the net up there were fish!

One of the more "fishing shack" operations. There's usually a metal frame over the dock and a tarp rolled up there at the front. If there are people there fishing, the tarp is unrolled and layed out and tied over the frame to create a shady place to hang out. I could see sitting here drinking beer, raising and lowering this net all day, collecting dinner. It's really quite zen to watch, even when you're not the getter of the fish!

River emptying out into the Adriatic Sea:

Another forested dirt path along the sea:

Taking the ferry across to the port of Ravenna…

…where we had to wait for an enormous ship:

Bikes, on another ferry (2 euros):

Arriving in Ravenna, at Piazza del Popolo. (That column, one of two in the piazza, was built in 1483):

Base of a column:

Our hotel is just down this street on the left, the Hotel Centrale Byron:

Kinda "meh" compared to last night's hotel, but what a fantastic location!

We checked in and parked our bikes in the special Eurobike spot, rested a bit (all that off road riding today was hard after another 73km ride yesterday), grabbed some gelato (because OMG we missed a day yesterday), and then did some more work back at the hotel for a few hours before heading out for dinner and some wandering.

Dinner was at the Ristorante Bella Venezia just a couple doors down and it was really really good. We had the best spaghetti carbonara ever, gnochetti, and we shared one of today's specials: a veal dish topped with prosciutto, zucchni, and a white sauce with cheese…it was delicious. We ordered a bottle of local Sangiovese and it was great as well. After dinner we walked around a bit and we're going to hit the hay a little earlier tonight than last night.

Hotel Centrale Byron at night:

Tomorrow: Brisighella!

Oh yeah, and while we were out walking around we saw one of the Eurobike stickers that we've been following this whole trip, so now we know which way to head outta town in the morning! They look like this, and they're on sign posts all along the entire route from Venice to Florence. Makes it a bit like a big puzzle/video game/scavenger hunt. This one says, "Go straight!":

Adria to Comacchio (Video)

Laura Domela — Wed, 14 May 2014 03:52:00 +0000

This was our third leg of a multi-day Eurobike tour from Venice to Florence. This leg (73 km) left Adria and went across the Po river delta along the Adriatic coast – through several villages – ending up in Comacchio. We saw what appeared to be an alternate route down the beach on the GPS and went off the published course. As a reward, we found ourselves doing about 4 km of sandy single track along the shore. Heh. The bikes performed well.

Comacchio Man

Laura Domela — Tue, 13 May 2014 19:53:16 +0000

I forgot to post this one in my last post, so I gave it a bit of special vintage treatment and now it gets its own post: