August 17, 2019
San Remo
Our last full day in Italy
Today was certainly a day in two parts
We came down from our mountain and were onto the road out. We left early once more so the traffic would be more moderate. For this first half of the ride we were on the SS1 all the time. There were other cyclists but they were all the type that wear cycle pants like my new ones and out on a serious training ride. It must have been a great route for this because it was taking us from one seaside village to another over a high Cape. As you can well imagine on this cloudless day the views continued to be spectacular. I was certainly very pleased with the extra power my bike was giving me but even then it was quite hard at time but there is no way I could have done it on a regular bike. I felt proud of Ken with his heavily laden regular bike - he must be pretty fit to manage those three significant hills at the age of 82, with only a short walk for a little while on the steepest. After 20km we arrived at Imperia and the hills were largely but not quite over. There was a Saturday Market going on which was filling all the streets. Mainly they were selling clothes but there was some beautiful fruit and some cheese. We stopped for a coffee and enjoyed listening to a guy playing an Irish Harp. Imperia is rather a different town - it is much bigger, the hype of the seaside resorts is not there and people are more likely to be carrying shopping than beach paraphernalia. It just doesn’t look as upmarket.
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From Imperia it was less than 10km to San Lazaro - there were still hills but milder. It was here we were to get our reward. From the San Lazaro railway station to San Remo (23km) is a state of the art rail trail. One of the tunnels was over a km, just think what sort of hill that cut off. Now there were hundreds and hundreds of cyclists in all shapes and sizes. There were walkers of course, a few roller bladders and a group on electric scooters. You could hire bikes and also those rather weird contraptions that look like two bikes joined together wth seating between them and a roof. Naturally there were lots of refreshment stops and we did stop at one for Ice Tea. It looked to me a good holiday alternative to baking on the beach.
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San Remo is quite a large town and it was here we got off the track to start hunting our hotel. Although I have a route on my phone it always seems to be a downside of the day. Oh no Hotel Riviera is up the hill so off we went and found it, a rather grotty hotel in a run down looking area. I went in. ‘Check in isn’t till 2pm. What is your name?’ Then the tenor of the conversation changed. He told me we were booked in their apartment down in the pedestrian centre. A few pleasantries about Hobbits, The Lord of the Rings and the ‘champion’ All Blacks and I had a bunch of keys and detailed instructions. We flew back down the hill and found our lovely apartment - it is spacious and comfortable and in the middle of things.
We really needed to eat as it was 1pm and all we had had all day was a banana. With the thought of how much we had enjoyed the beach club the other day we headed for the beach. What we found was not as much fun as the other one. It was much fancier and none of the patrons wore bikinis, they were all well dressed. It was bigger and not as crowded. We sat enjoying looking out to the Mediterranean thinking how lucky we were while I had a massive gelato concoction and an aperol while Ken thinking we should eat healthily had a huge salad and a beerp
Back to the apartment to organise ourselves and we will be off about 7.30 for our last Italian meal
Today's ride: 53 km (33 miles)
Total: 1,119 km (695 miles)
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And just a banana? How did you pass on those peaches at the market .... they sure looked good.
Keith
4 years ago
Ciao
Tricia
4 years ago