Ben’s Race Page

Okay, I’m running out of time, so quick thoughts…

I hiked between Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso. Hike was tough, but fun and I’m glad I did it. Vernazza and Monterosso are the most touristy towns. Monterosso has the only sand beach and it costs $5 euro for a chair. Staying in Riomaggori was the right move on our part because it was not completely overrun by tourists. Found a more local place and had a good dinner. There were candles set up all over the street and some sort of procession up to the church by our hotel. Not sure what it was.

6/25
Took the Train to Spezia and biked to Pisa since we were close. We were supposed to go to Lucca directly. Pisa was overrun by tourists and not really worth going to. Had the worst lunch of the trip there. WE also had a McBeer, so that was worth it. Really boring ride because it was al flat and by the coast. Endless beaches. Lucca was very cool as it is a walled city. Lots of narrow streets with no car access and lots of peopel on bikes. We found a hotel that was a little pricey, but good. Got a suggestion for a local restaurant (Leo) and had a great dinner there. Finished it off with Lemoncello.

6/26
Last day of biking. Sad and glad at the same time. Weather started out nice, but turned overcast and threatened rain. We decided to take a more local route into Florence and followed the river a ways. Stopped in Emperoli for lunch. Put on all of our rain gear and headed out. We had some rain, but it was not bad. Stopped at the Ipermercado Coop outside of Florence and it was an awesome store. Like a super Walmart. Finally made it into Florence and found the hotel pretty easily. It’s a lot like a bed and breakfast, but the host is very knowledgable and there si a great welcome guide. There’s also lots of tour guide books.

Anyway, we’re having a great time. I will put up some pictures when I get a chance. Probably when I get home and sift through them all.

Woke up late and headed to the train station. Had to pay extra for the bikes, but the train had a nice bike rack on it. We didn’t realize we needed to stamp our tickets in the station and the counductor didn’t speak english, but aparently, it’s a $25 Euro fine per ticket for not stamping them. That would have been $150 euro, but he only charged us $15.

We found a decent room and headed out to get lunch. Ate pizza and drank wine on the beach. A beach here is just any access to the water. Here, it was all rocks that you sat on. Teh winds were high and the sea was rough. Lots of waves and big splashes on the rocks. Found the best Gelateria in the world.

We took a 30 minute nap and were woken up by 7 minutes of church bells ringing. Hiked over to Manarola where we had some good pizza for a snack and decided to head over to Corniglia with some small travelers of wine (250ml personal bottles).

This was a lot farther and harder walk, but made it to Corniglia. It is way up in the mountains and we had to walk up quite a bit to get there. It is the smallest of the 5 towns and probably the least touristy. We had a great dinner at as small place. I ordered soemthing that was really good. I’ll have to look up the name again, but I’m glad I didn’t know what was in it when I ordered it. Took the train back, had some gelato, and went to bed.

We rode from San Remo to Imperio, where we checked the train schedule because we were going to bike as far as we could and then take the train to Genova. A helpful man at the train station told us there is still a train strike, so no train for us. Hard climb out of Imperio. Stopped in the next town where they had magazines packaged with all kinds of proudcts. Tupperware, yarn, watches, walkie talkies…. it was crazy.

Ate lunch in Alassio on the beach. More climbs and great views. We went through some tunnels with pillars on the sea side that were cool. We passes a lot more cyclists on the road in Italy than we did in France. We found a hotel near a pedestrian area and found a good place for dinner.

We made it into Florence safely. We are done with the biking portion of the trip now. My butt is releived, but Iàm also sad in a way. Some of the most fun we had was stopping in the little towns along the way and seeing the views after a hard climb.

With all the long days of cycling, it’s been tough to find the time to blog. Our days basically consist of waking up at 7:30 ish am and then cycling until about 7pm. We find a place to stay and eat. There’s not a whole lot of downtime. I’ll try to catch up on some of the trip here.

June 21 - Nice to Monte Carlo to San Remo

As Graeme said, “Breakfast in France, Lunch in Monte Carlo, Dinner in Italy.” Lots of climbs and Monte Carlo had some insanely steep hills. Took pictures at the Italian border and put stickers on our bikes for the countries we biked through. Dinner took a long time (like 3 hours). Our hotel room is nice and has a balcony and a clothes line. The hotel had a great roof deck we sat out on. Nice town center, but small.

With lots of cycling and trains, we made it into nice and I think we’re somewhat back on schedule.

Monday, June 18
- On the wayout of Marseille, we had some bike difficulties and Graeme broke a spoke on his rear tire. Luckily, we were still in town and after a lot of asking directions and about 8 miles of riding around town, we found Decathlon, a large bike store. 8 euros and about 20 minutes later, Graeme’s wheel was fixed. Decathlon was a big store and a lot of the bikes we see here are Decathlon brand. I had y first big climb to get out of Marseille and it was tough, but the views over the city were awesome. The scariest part was the decent down the mountain. I’m not sure how fast I was going, but I tried to keep the speed down. We hit Cassis and still had to do a lot of decending to ge into town. After all the mornng trouble, we pulled into Cassis around 3pm and grabbed some lunch. Everything here seeme to be ham, cheese, and butter, so that’s prety much what I have been eating. That, and lots of bread. We pulled out and headed along to La Ciotat, whre we briefly stopped and then decided to ride to the next town and take a train to Toloun. There was a long line at the ticket counter, so we got on the train and planned to buy ticket there. They had a great bike rack on the train. We got off and never ended up paying for tickets. We got into town and found a hotel. We ate a great dinner with awesome mouse chocolat and then found a soccer ball in a fountain and kicked it back to the hotel.

Dan is waiting to use this computer and it’s taking me too long, so I’m just going to make some bullet point highlights.

Tuesday, June 19
- Today was a really tough day with a lot of up and down. I had a couple of incidents today. I racked mysef and almost fell off the bike going up a hill. My bike fellover at a scenic overlook. Nothing major. We had a lot of great bike paths today, which made things a lot easier. We ended up in St. Tropez today. Very expensive town. Lots of large yachts, one was 4 stories tall. We were near a squar and a lot of people were playing bacchi ball. We decided we must play before we leave. We ended the night drinking beer and I sat up in a tree in the square.

Wednesday, June 20.
- The plan was to take a boat over to Cannes or Nice, but there were no boats, so we ended up biking and trying to take a train to Nice. It was pretty flat today, which was great, but when we got to Frejus, there was no train to Nice. We rode to the next town, St. Raphael and there was a train strike of some sort, so we had to take a TGV train that didn’t leave unti 4:30, so we sat and had a cafe. We had a heck of time getting ourbikes on the train, but finally made it into Nice, but didn’t get to enjoy the beach as nuch as w would have liked. Dan lost his wallet (he just found it, so that’s good). Ate Donor Kababs fordinner and are tryin to figure out what to do today.

Random thoughts:
- Lots of jambon (ham) here.
- A lot more people smoke.
- Cafe (coffee, actually esprsso) is really good.
- Lots of bread.

I’m at the hotel right now. The keyboard on this computer is not the same as an American keyboard, so I apologize for misspellings. Anyway, it has been fun so far. My bike made it, but the box was really ripped up. I put it together today and everything seems in order. I have to tighten things up and take it for a test ride.

European air travel is much better than American air travel. It just seems easier. Most notably, everyone is not trying to shove all of their luggage in the overhead compartment. That and they seem friendlier and more accomodating.

When I got in, Dan and Graeme were running late, so I took the bus and met them at the train station. When they arrived, I was greeted with a bottle of Port and was forced to drink. We got to the hotel easily and I took a shower and we went out to dinner.

Dan just fixed the keyboard to American.

So far, people have been really nice here. We met a man and his family at dinner lastnight and had a conversation with him. Well, Graeme did and Dan and I picked up on a few things. He gave us his phone number and offered to take us on a tour of Marsielle today.

Sidenotes: Commercials here are hysterical and make no sense. When I hear people speaking French, I think they are saying, “You are not a real robot.”

Anyway, I have to go finish putting my bike together. I’ll try to post some pictures later.

Sorry for not keeping up with the blog. I have been resting and only training sporadically since the marathon and I have also been preparing for Eurotrip 2007. I will be leaving on Friday to meet a couple of buddies in Marseilles, France and we will be cycling to Florence, Italy. It’s been a busy week and I still have aton of stuff to do in order to be ready. I’m going to create a page for the trip and I will try to blog when I can. Here’s a rough map of the trip: Eurortip 2007.