A Last Look at Italy with Love

This post, as you will soon realize, will be more visually stimulating and use fewer words.  The images still evoke the incredible feelings I enjoyed while pedaling along through Puglia, or climbing the high cliffs on the Amalfi coast.

Here we are all set for our first full day of riding.  Check out the cool riding shorts and shirts, tags just recently removed.  I found out at the end of the trip that everyone was so amazed that we didn’t cycle seriously. (Unless you count the bike hikes on Martha’s Vineyard as serious.)

This is where we biked and what we saw.  It wasn’t difficult to feel fully transported away from everyday cares.  Somehow, time is felt differently in Italy.  More time to eat, to have conversations, to enjoy……

And I bet not having any connectivity–that’s right folks–no cell, no TV, no newspapers, and no computer, really made a difference.  Even the >500 emails that awaited me upon return couldn’t put a damper on these memories.

And we learned to make mozzarella cheese which we then ate with tomatoes I was sure were injected with the most yummy tomato taste and lots of sunshine derived sugar.

We were all ready to eat any time of the day, every day.

And most importantly, we met many interesting people and made a few new friends.

Here is almost the whole group of 24 bikers and 2 leaders

And here are some of our new friends, Hedy, my biking partner, and Ken, the dare devil,  from Denver (Vail here we come!)

Thus we spent the first half of our marvelous Italy trip.

After a long train ride from Bari to Rome and then to Salerno, we finally made it to our hotel on a cliff just outside of Amalfi–a mere 10 minute walk down to the town and at least a 30 minute hike back up.  Our first day we ate overlooking the Mediterranean, and crashed by the seaside after almost 200 miles of biking.  What a relief!

Exploring this area brought us to the pageantry of the once every four year (how lucky to be there!) re-enactment of a medieval boat race between Venezia, Pisa, Genoa, and Amalfi.  The costumes authentic and the boat race exciting.  While watching perched up high on the road, we weren’t sure if we won, but the Amalfi team took home the gold trophy.  We had already become part of the family.

We explored Positano, took an open air bus in the rain to beautiful Ravello, and spent a day visiting Pompeii–too much to take in and take pictures, too.  The trip to Pompeii was extra special–a gift from my partners and my staff.

A day later we left for Rome and then for home.  Still jet lagged, I write this last post on our trip to Italy.  Time to get back to a different reality.  We are already planning our next Backroads adventure…….

Positano:                                                                                         Beautiful gardens in Ravello: