Lago di Bolsena

The train left us out in the evening light of the coastal town of Ladispoli on the eve of May Day, a national holiday in all of Europe. The campgrounds we have encountered so far are one of two flavors -- those frequented by primarily Italians and those by Northern Europeans. This one was of the Italian variety. Small trailers are parked year-round on small sites, and have constructed around them entire structures, including canopies, small sheds with stove and fridge, and tiled decks. Large familial groups come together play on the beach and share meals. We occupied one of the rare squares of grass between this metropolis of caravans. Since it was a holiday, the campground was packed. Kids were playing everywhere, running between sites and playing soccer in the roadways. The Italians don't eat their evening meal until 8pm, and the barbeque right next to us was fired up just as we were ready to roll into bed. It was a frenzy of activity, as if the vacationing Italians transferred the intensity of their home cities to their weekend getaway. After our travels in Rome and Naples and this little city of campers, we were ready to head out into the country side and start biking in earnest.

From Ladispoli we went north along the coast to Tarquinia. Nearby are some of the best Etruscan tombs in Italy, and we spent the morning of our exit from Tarquinia visiting them. The tombs date from around the 6th century BC, and more than 6,000 tombs have been located in the region surronding this town. The tombs are subterranean, and the site we visited has constructed about 20 shelters with stairs leading into the tombs. Behind glass in a climate-controlled environment are the colorful frescoes, amazingingly vivid for their age.

It is spring, and the wildflowers are blooming all around us. In California the golden poppy is the state flower, and during its peak blooms it colors the hillsides orange. But here the poppies are a bright red, appropriate for the bold colors the Italians favor in their design motifs.


The contrast of the old and new throughout the country continues to amaze us. Above John rides by an aqueduct from the early 18th century.


As we moved eastward into the interior of the Lazio province, we headed towards two large lakes indicated on our map -- Lago di Vico and Lago di Bolsena. Both are formed in the calderas, much like Crater Lake in Oregon. It was a long, hot climb to get to the rim of Lago di Vico, and an exhilirating descent back down to lake level. We traveled on country roads with light traffic in an area not frequented by foreign visitors. Lago di Bolsena is the larger of the two lakes, and Bolsena is a medieval fortress town on its east shore.

Rain kept us there an extra day, and we spent time exploring the narrow streets. We noticed several sculptures and planters around the town of Bolsena with a distinctive human head form. Later we came acoss the studio of the artist and his small shop from which he sells his work.

It was a peaceful day in Bolsena, our transition from the city to the country, from the ancient to the medieval.

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Amalfi Coast

One of our goals while in this part of Southern Italy was to bike the Amalfi Coast. Our guidebook described the route in detail, and its claims of this stretch of coastline being the most spectacular in Italy and quite acheivable by bike. We decided to ignore the looks of horror in the eyes of fellow tourists when we mentioned we would be cycling the road.

It was a cold and damp and overcast day when we left Sorrento, so the views of the highest cliffs were obscured by clouds. There were a couple of steep grades, but in general the most scenic stretches were nice and even. Many times the only thing separating us from the cliffs below was a rock wall and no shoulder. But the rock wall was more substantial than any guard rail in the U.S., and cars and scooters were also enjoying the view and moving at a reasonable speed. We just tried not to look down while moving

We passed a group of hikers also traveling the road (the red blob sharing the road with me in the photo above).

We took two days to do the coast from Sorrento to Salerno. In the midsection of the coast are towns built literally on hillsides. Roads go impossibly up, but the highest parts of the towns are only reacheable by foot. Construction materials are carried up by horse and mule. And on the slopes are terraces with groves of lemon trees

Our plan was to find the campground menitioned in our guidebook, but we could not find it. It was still early, so we continued on. We decided to just try and find a hotel or pension house along the way. By the time we got to the town of Minori it was getting late and we were cold and tired. We noticed an agriturismo sign with a tent symbol for Il Campanile -- just our style. But it pointed uphill, and we were not sure how far it would be. We ducked into a travel agency, where the agent spoke enough English to call the proprietor of the farm, and he met us at the office. We followed him by bike until it got so steep we could pedal no more, then walked the bikes to the bottom of a very steep set of stairs. From there we took off the panniers and walked a thousand steps, came back and carried the bikes up the same steps. Our host was a gentleman and carried my bike -- good thing, because I don't think I had it in me to do it myself.

The bikes were parked within the front gate, and the bags were shuttled up another thousand steps. to the top-most terrace of the town. We were surrounded by terraces of lemon trees and vegetable plots. We were shown to a grassy terrace, and at the end was a bathroom with shower and toilet. We were told dinner would be at 7 pm, on the patio where we parked the bikes (one thousand steps down).

That evening we enjoyed a home-cooked meal of local specialties overlooking the lights of the town far below -- pasta, grilled sausage and pork (there goes that vegetarianism out the door again), fresh bread, salad with tender greens grown by our hosts and topped with the juice of lemons from the groves surrounding us. They seved us wine from grapes grown on the farm and bottled themselves. By the time we finished a liter of the wine we were too drunk to say no to home-made limoncello. We stumbled up the thousand steps to bed, happy and satiated.

The next day we finished our Amalfi Coast tour, arriving in Salerno by noon. We headed for the train station, and bought tickets to Ladispoli, a coastal town north of Rome. Within an hour we were on the train, looking out the window at the landscape we had biked just a week earlier. From here we would begin the next leg of our journey, heading north towards Siena and Florence.

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Sorrento

We crossed the Bay of Naples on a half hour ferry ride to the town of Sorrento. A picturesque harbor town, it is frequented by many British and German tourists. We stayed here for four nights at a campground built on terraces with views overlooking the town. This was our base for viewing more great sites -- Pompeii, Vesuvius, Ercolano, Capri. Public buses and trains took us everywhere we needed to go, and without our bikes we once again we blended into the tourist crowds.



The bus ride up Vesuvius was itself worth the price of admission. Steep and winding, and often not wide enough for two tour buses to pass each other. Our bus driver had a showdown on our descent, making the uphill bus back up to a wider spot in the road so we could pass. The whole time cars and scooters flowed through the gap between the noses of the bus. At the end of the road it is a short walk to the rim of the crater, where steam still seeps from the rocks. It was howling wind, with 50 mph gusts, so the view below as hazy from dust and smog. Thanks to the gentleman at the curio shop at the end of the trail, we were able to locate Pompeii in the distance. He was able to point out the site in four languages, rattled off in succession when asked.



We spent an afternoon in Ercolano, a town also destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. This is a smaller site than Pompeii, but what makes it different is it was covered by mud flows, instead of hot ash. As a result, charred wood and iron grates were preserved.



Our last day we took the ferry to the island of Capri. We walked the narrow streets, like mice in a maze. Wide enough for just two people with walls towering on either side preventing a view to orient oneself, we walked for a mile, emerging just a few hundred feet from where we started. Most touists who wish to reach the high point of the island, Monte Solaro, take a single-person ski lift to the top. We opted to walk, hiking through a forest path lined with spring flowers. We had a beautiful day, and the waters of the Mediterranean were azure blue. A nice ending to our stay in Sorrento.

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Naples

From Rome we cycled three days towards Naples. We reached the coast on the second day, and passed through resort towns, quiet and vacant prior to the summer season. We passed through agricultural towns, and bought melons bursting with juice from roadside stands. There are small markets everywhere, but they all are stocked with the basic essentials of good quality -- cheese, bread, vegetables, fruit, olive oil. Food is plentiful and excellent, but we need to be sure to get it early, since shops close in the afternoon from about 2 to 4 pm.


Outside of the tourist routes foreign travelers are less common, and the people have been so kind to us. We stopped to eat our lunch of bread and cheese at a gas station and market. Sitting next to us were a couple of gentleman with lunch bags the size of a small coolers. Out came multiple courses -- bowls of salad, cheese, bread. One man pulled out a salami and started slicing off chunks. He offered a large section to us. We hesitated at the unexpected generosity and our supposed vegetarianism. But we took it, and found it to be very delicious. Apparently made by the man himself, he beamed when we expressed our pleasure.

Our goal was Naples. Having made a contact with the Langella family through WarmShowers.org, a networking site for bike tourists, we had a place to stay. As we approached the city, we encountered dense traffic and more cobblestones. We called Francesco, our host, and he met us by the docks on his bike. He then us led us throught the streets of the city to his home in the old part of town, through tunnels of buildings and narrow streets, where vendors display their wares, throngs of people walk, and scooters and cars buzz by with just a cautionary honk. For the next two nights we were spoiled by a personal tour of the sights of the city, home-cooked Napolese cuisine, and the company of our superb hosts.

We visited The National Archaeological Museum of Naples, and also the famous cloister of Santa Chiara, where the painted columns were strikingly beautiful. We met our host for a hike for a panoramic view of Naples from the Castel Sant'Elmo. We stayed up too late, ate too much, but left happy and with the joy of a new friendship. On our final morning, Francesco led us through the city of the last time to the dock, where we loaded ourselves and our bikes for a trip across the bay to Sorrento for the next leg of our journey.

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Rome

It was not our intent to cycle through Rome. But we arrived at the airport at 5 pm in fading light, and we found out that bikes were not allowed on the express train we intended to take to the hotel we booked for the first night. So we got on another train. We sat huddled with our map of Rome, trying to figure out which stop to get off on. Emerging from the station, it was dusk and the streets were wet from a recent thunderstorm. We donned our bright vests and with John's sixth sense of direction, we headed off, sharing the streets with scooters, Fiats, and Smart cars, all traveling faster and maneuvering much quicker than us.

We merged onto a street of rain-slicked cobblestones that began to curve, and as we turned we saw the Colosseum. There was a backdrop of clouds highlighted golden by the setting sun, and the arches illuminated by the last light, a collision of the ancient and modern. It was magical.

The next day we decided to avoid the train to get to our campground north of town. We got different stories -- bikes allowed after 9 pm, bikes not allowed anytime, bikes allowed only on some trains. So we cycled. It was more like mostly pushing and some pedaling through the city center. But we saw several sites, and we must have been a sight, too, based on the stares we got as we wheeled our way around with bikes fully loaded with panniers. Eventually we reached the bike trail that follows the Tiber River, passing beneath ancient bridges, and to the campground.

For the next five days we were regular tourists, without bicycles, blending into the crowd. We walked from morning until night, visiting all the biggies -- Vatican City, the Forum, the Colosseum, museums, churches, and fountains. We took public transport everywhere, and felt secure and welcome wherever we went.

The day we left Rome we headed south on the same bike trail on the Tiber River. Towards the old part of town the path turned from asphalt to cobblestone. Besides the discomfort, it also made progress slow, made even slower by the flat tire John got from glass on the trail. But we pushed on, leaving the bike trail and exiting Rome through the gates at the Via Appia. As we went south, there were fewer cars and bigger cobblestones. Most of the trail were interlocking cobbles maybe five inches square, but some sections had very large stones, a couple of feet square. These dated from the time of the Romans, and one could still see the grooves from the carts etched in these stones. It was quiet, bumping along under a canopy of trees, and we felt like we were transported back in time.

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Out of (Virtual) Hibernation

Winter has nearly passed -- just another paragraph in the book of life. The past several months have have been unexceptional – a simple prose of skiing, an occasional exclamation mark of a powder day, with parenthetical trips to Southern California for business and family visits. But this winter is nearly over. The gritty snow drifts around town are visibly shrinking in size on a daily basis. The sun is higher on the horizon, the days are warmer, and birds are singing in celebration. And so this virtual hibernation is over, spring is here, and we are on the edge of a new adventure, a new chapter.

In a couple of weeks our bikes will be packed in boxes and we will join them on an airplane to Rome. Our timing could not be better – the dollar is at an all-time low compared to the Euro. But life is too short, and we are strong of leg. We will travel simply, with everything we need on our bikes, camping through Northern Italy and Germany for the next five months, fueled by good cheese and bread. My husband says his name is now Giovanni, having diligently studied Italian for weeks so we may navigate our way through the culture. I am responsible for German, having the advantage from immigrant parents. And we look forward to reunions and new unions with family in Germany.

So, stop by again soon. You are welcome to join us for the ride.

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Shoulder Season

Our days for the past couple of months have been dictated by weather. If the wind was not blowing, and the skies were not crying, then we laced up our hiking boots and were out the door early to explore a new place in our backyard. This is the shoulder season – the time after Labor Day and before the snows of winter – when the tourists are gone, the streets are quiet, and it feels like the most sparsely populated county in California that it is.

This shoulder season was a long one. Despite some small storms in October that dusted the higher elevations, it wasn’t until last night that we received our first major snowfall. This is a great relief to the local economy, which depends greatly on the visitors that come and ski. It might be a White Christmas after all.

Here is a photo album of some of our favorite images from the last couple of months…

View looking east to June Lake Loop from the unoffically-named peak "Little Middle". Early season snow highlights the ski runs of the June Mountain Ski Area.







Vibrant autumn colors in Lee Vining Canyon, mid-October.







View of Mono Lake, looking east from the summit of Koip Peak.







A rare, graceful arch in the quartz monozonite of Yosemite, on the trail to North Dome.







Steelhead Lake, looking south towards Tioga Pass, on our way down from Shepard Crest.







Weathered stump in the pumice gravel of Glass Mountain.







Sculpted ice that was once a flowing stream emanating from Mildred Lake, Yosemite National Park.







Twisted roof pendant in Convict Canyon on December 5, just a couple of days before the big snow.







The view out our window this afternoon.

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