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ilanaramaContinued from part 1!
It had been somewhat unwieldy to have the entire group riding together, and easier when we were split into two groups, so in general we chose to ride in two groups. As Britt was one of the people comfortable navigating with his phone, he was the leader of group B (for Britt, of course). It was nominally the second, slower group, though “slow” mostly meant that we stopped to take more photos, and sometimes people would ride with one group in the morning and the other in the afternoon. On our fourth day, however, we were out in front. The other group caught up with us at this bridge, but as we all stopped to take photos, we left before they did.
It took us a while to get out of Bergamo’s fairly urbanized suburbs, and the traffic made for nerve-wracking riding until we got into the smaller towns. One small town we passed through, Carvisi-Cabanetti, was decorated with yellow-and-white banners hanging from light struts, and yellow-and-white ribbon rosettes tied to gates and grilles. As we left town, I saw some women with a basket of rosettes, and so June and I stopped, summoned up all the Italian we knew (not much!) and asked them about it. Between our few Italian words and their few words of English, we learned that a saint’s feast day would be celebrated on Saturday, and the decorations were in the town’s official colors. (Later that day we saw blue-and-white ribbons, in another town.)
We slowly climbed through Sotto il Monte, where Pope John XXIII was born (they are very proud of this, as evidenced by the number of signs telling us this), then descended toward the Adda River valley. The usual route, as described in our tour brochure, included “a memorable experience” crossing the river on “Leonardo da Vinci’s ferry”, a cable-pulled ferry he purportedly designed. Alas, the combination of drought-lowered waters and the decamping of the ferry operation company to a more lucrative gig elsewhere meant we had to take an alternate route, which we fortunately remembered after we’d only gone about a half-mile in the wrong direction!
At one point the alternate route followed a rather busy road that we did not really want to ride on. Fortunately, a dirt path alongside a field provided a pleasant “alternate alternate” route. The field was covered with beautiful thick grass – we thought it might be a sod farm – and Britt couldn’t resist, he jumped off his bike and made a “grass angel”! But all good things must come to an end, and so did the path. We had to carry our bikes back up the embankment to the nasty busy road, though fortunately we didn’t need to stay on it long.
Unfortunately, when we left the busy road (a scary left turn on a scary traffic circle), we were on an even busier one! This road took us across the Adda on a big high bridge, and we were all so nervous trying not to get hit by vehicles that we missed the turnoff onto the bicycle path that would take us the rest of the way to Garlate, our destination for the night. But Britt looked at the map and found us a way, and soon we were on a quiet pathway next to the river and our stress levels plummeted. And there, right by the river, was a small restaurant with shaded outdoor seating – perfect!
Our lunch at the Tofè Cafè was delicious, but as we ate we couldn’t help wondering where the rest of our group was. Finally June texted them, and found out that one of the riders had wrecked on a steep descent and hurt his shoulder badly enough that he felt his injuries should be checked out by a doctor. They had texted the tour representative, Alberto, who took him and his wife to a nearby hospital. (He ended up not riding the rest of the trip, but still seemed to enjoy himself!) The rest of the group was on their way to join us, but we finished our meal before they arrived – though we happily turned our table over to them.
Riding along the river was really pleasant. It was good to get away from the traffic, and the path was not that busy and super scenic. In fact, the river was so pretty that a few of us decided to get a little closer – and Britt decided to get a lot closer!
But it wasn’t just the river that was scenic. We’d moved closer to the edges of the Alps, and the towering cliffs on the other side of the river looked very impressive. It had been a fairly short day in terms of miles, so as we approached Garlate, that day’s destination, we decided to detour across a bridge to Caloziocorte, which from our side of the river looked like a charming town. Unfortunately, there was a lot of traffic on the main roads, and when we tried the smaller ones, none of them connected to anywhere and we found ourselves wandering around industrial and residential areas, nowhere near the quiet piazzas where we’d hoped to relax with a gelato, so after a while we gave up and went back to the west side of the river and rode the rest of the way to our hotel, for a total distance of about 28 miles.
Our hotel was a Best Western, perfectly nice but on the busy main road through town, though we’d been able to come to it on back roads from the river path. I still really wanted that gelato, though. I hadn’t yet had any Italian gelato, partly because I’m a little lactose sensitive and nervous about dairy, but it had been a hot day and I had become a little obsessed with the idea of having a delicious cold treat! So after we checked in, I checked Google Maps and found a highly-rated gelato place a short walk down the road. It was easy to talk others into coming with me, and mmmm what a delicious gelato it was. (And bonus, no gut issues after all! Needless to say, I made up for my prior lack of gelato over the next few days.)
Back at the hotel, Britt wanted to watch the basketball playoffs on his phone (we used to live in Boulder, he’s a Nuggets fan). As our room was kind of small and to keep the hot sun out we had to draw the shade, I decided to go up to the rooftop balcony to read...but first I went to the lobby bar and got an Aperol Spritz to take with me. (The Aperol Spritz is an extremely popular summer drink in Italy. The NYT wrote a disparaging article about it a few years ago, so I had never bothered to make one despite Aperol being a staple of my home bar, but after drinking many of them in Italy I have to say, the haters are wrong. I am actually drinking one now, as I am writing this paragraph.)
We decided to meet as a group at a nearby bar and restaurant, Mojito, to have drinks and then dinner. But the complementary appetizers they provided were filling enough that we ended up not ordering dinner, so my “dinner” this evening was: one gelato, one Aperol Spritz, one mojito, and various fried finger foods and foccacia. Please don’t tell my mother!
Despite my dubious meal choices, I was ready to go the next morning. Today would be another relatively short day, distance-wise, but it was quite hilly, starting out with a 500-foot climb over the first mile and a half. Getting up into the hills gave us great views, though.
It was hot again, so all the climbing made us rather sweaty. Fortunately, our route took us by several small lakes, and as I’d known we might have the opportunity for a swim or two, I’d made sure that my swimsuit (okay, my swimsuit bottoms – my sportsbra could pass well enough as a top) was in my pack and easily accessible. It was wonderful to be able to jump in and splash around!
After a dip in Lake Pusiano, we rode along the length of Lago di Alserio on a forested path where various tree stumps had been carved into whimsical shapes.
Then we were back on the roads again for another big climb through a few more small towns. At the top of the hill we could see Lake Como sparkling below us in the distance. It was a fast ride down at first, but then we turned off the road onto trails again, and it was too pretty to rush through! But soon we came to the end of our ride, only about 22 miles but a lot of elevation gain and loss.
Como is a very popular tourist town, with many small piazzas surrounded by bars and gelaterias, and a big waterfront park where a festival was going on, lots of booths with food and drink, and vendors selling all sorts of things, clothes, spices, and so on. One booth was selling interesting-looking liqueurs flavored with gentian. These intrigued me, but the owner made the mistake of giving me a little to taste – yuck, no sale! Our hotel wasn’t far from the cathedral, and some of our group went to tour it, but I was more interested in gelato. Again it was quite tasty!
Como was also where I had what was, alas, my worst meal in Italy. It was my own fault, though; I hadn’t realized that the restaurant we went to was vegan. Not that vegan food is bad, but I ordered the lasagna. I mean, it was probably a decent casserole, but I’d been imagining lasagna, and it was very much not lasagna!
As our last day would be a long one, we rose early – or at least, as early as we could and still get breakfast in the hotel. All of the hotels on this trip included breakfast buffets, and the breakfasts were all fairly similar: various croissants (some filled with chocolate or fruit preserves), cakes, breads, hard-boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, thinly-sliced deli meats and cheeses, fruits, and various cereals (including a muesli or granola) with yogurt, milk, nuts, and seeds to add. I usually went for the deliciousness of a croissant and a piece of cake, a few pieces of meat or eggs, and a lot of fruit, in hopes that the healthy components would outweigh the pastries. Most of the hotels had espresso machines that we could serve ourselves from, but the nicer places would serve espresso or coffee – which was better quality, I’m sure, but you couldn’t get cup after cup as you could with the self-serve machines, alas.
As with the previous day, we’d be starting with a big hill – but this one was even longer, and a little steeper, too. I was feeling pretty good, though, and powered up the hill ahead of everyone else except for a few of the e-bike riders! After that climb, we all definitely needed more coffee, and stopped at Casa del Caffè Malnate for another dose.
It was another hot day, but again, we had a lake to stop at. Fortunately Lake Varese’s swans didn’t seem to mind us getting into the water with them.
After our swim, we were getting hungry, and we could see that our route would take us on out-of-the-way paths for a while, so we detoured to the main road (up a hill, but that was okay!) to Pepe Rosa, a pizzeria that turned out to have some delicious beer on tap, and also some really interesting and tasty pizza options. (They were also really nice about accommodating fourteen damp and somewhat muddy cyclists.) Good thing we ate heartily, because we had some hard work ahead of us!
A combination of roads and pathways led us to Ranco, a small town on Lake Maggiore and the last destination on the bike ride. We arrived and checked into the Hotel Belvedere – Britt and I were relegated to a tiny attic room on the top floor, but alas they were full and we couldn’t change it – and then just sat around the hotel’s pool, reading, chatting, and drinking Aperol Spritzes until it was time for our last dinner as a group. We all got a little loopy over wine and good food (both Britt and I had pike-perch from the lake in a sauce of anchovies, capers, and parsley, which was so good I’m going to see if I can figure out a decent recipe), but we had good reason, as we were almost all going our separate ways the next day. Some of the group had already traveled a little in Italy first, and were heading home; some were going to Cinque Terre, a famously scenic group of towns on the coast; and Britt and I were going to the Dolomites.
In the morning we shared a taxi to Angera, perhaps two miles down the coast of Lake Maggiore, where we would get the (also very short-distance) ferry to Arona, on the other side of the lake. I felt sad we didn’t have more time there, as the castle above Angera, the Rocca Borromeo di Angera, looked really interesting, and Arona also had an interesting-looking castle perched above it. But we had our itinerary set and many of our tickets already purchased – ferry to Arona, train via Milan and Verona to Trento, where we’d spend the night, and then set out the next morning via another train and a series of buses to the small ski resort town of San Vigilio di Marebbe, where we’d begin the next phase of our adventure.
In conclusion, a photo that captures the image in my mind of Lombardy - it's a place of flowers:
It had been somewhat unwieldy to have the entire group riding together, and easier when we were split into two groups, so in general we chose to ride in two groups. As Britt was one of the people comfortable navigating with his phone, he was the leader of group B (for Britt, of course). It was nominally the second, slower group, though “slow” mostly meant that we stopped to take more photos, and sometimes people would ride with one group in the morning and the other in the afternoon. On our fourth day, however, we were out in front. The other group caught up with us at this bridge, but as we all stopped to take photos, we left before they did.
It took us a while to get out of Bergamo’s fairly urbanized suburbs, and the traffic made for nerve-wracking riding until we got into the smaller towns. One small town we passed through, Carvisi-Cabanetti, was decorated with yellow-and-white banners hanging from light struts, and yellow-and-white ribbon rosettes tied to gates and grilles. As we left town, I saw some women with a basket of rosettes, and so June and I stopped, summoned up all the Italian we knew (not much!) and asked them about it. Between our few Italian words and their few words of English, we learned that a saint’s feast day would be celebrated on Saturday, and the decorations were in the town’s official colors. (Later that day we saw blue-and-white ribbons, in another town.)
We slowly climbed through Sotto il Monte, where Pope John XXIII was born (they are very proud of this, as evidenced by the number of signs telling us this), then descended toward the Adda River valley. The usual route, as described in our tour brochure, included “a memorable experience” crossing the river on “Leonardo da Vinci’s ferry”, a cable-pulled ferry he purportedly designed. Alas, the combination of drought-lowered waters and the decamping of the ferry operation company to a more lucrative gig elsewhere meant we had to take an alternate route, which we fortunately remembered after we’d only gone about a half-mile in the wrong direction!
At one point the alternate route followed a rather busy road that we did not really want to ride on. Fortunately, a dirt path alongside a field provided a pleasant “alternate alternate” route. The field was covered with beautiful thick grass – we thought it might be a sod farm – and Britt couldn’t resist, he jumped off his bike and made a “grass angel”! But all good things must come to an end, and so did the path. We had to carry our bikes back up the embankment to the nasty busy road, though fortunately we didn’t need to stay on it long.
Unfortunately, when we left the busy road (a scary left turn on a scary traffic circle), we were on an even busier one! This road took us across the Adda on a big high bridge, and we were all so nervous trying not to get hit by vehicles that we missed the turnoff onto the bicycle path that would take us the rest of the way to Garlate, our destination for the night. But Britt looked at the map and found us a way, and soon we were on a quiet pathway next to the river and our stress levels plummeted. And there, right by the river, was a small restaurant with shaded outdoor seating – perfect!
Our lunch at the Tofè Cafè was delicious, but as we ate we couldn’t help wondering where the rest of our group was. Finally June texted them, and found out that one of the riders had wrecked on a steep descent and hurt his shoulder badly enough that he felt his injuries should be checked out by a doctor. They had texted the tour representative, Alberto, who took him and his wife to a nearby hospital. (He ended up not riding the rest of the trip, but still seemed to enjoy himself!) The rest of the group was on their way to join us, but we finished our meal before they arrived – though we happily turned our table over to them.
Riding along the river was really pleasant. It was good to get away from the traffic, and the path was not that busy and super scenic. In fact, the river was so pretty that a few of us decided to get a little closer – and Britt decided to get a lot closer!
But it wasn’t just the river that was scenic. We’d moved closer to the edges of the Alps, and the towering cliffs on the other side of the river looked very impressive. It had been a fairly short day in terms of miles, so as we approached Garlate, that day’s destination, we decided to detour across a bridge to Caloziocorte, which from our side of the river looked like a charming town. Unfortunately, there was a lot of traffic on the main roads, and when we tried the smaller ones, none of them connected to anywhere and we found ourselves wandering around industrial and residential areas, nowhere near the quiet piazzas where we’d hoped to relax with a gelato, so after a while we gave up and went back to the west side of the river and rode the rest of the way to our hotel, for a total distance of about 28 miles.
Our hotel was a Best Western, perfectly nice but on the busy main road through town, though we’d been able to come to it on back roads from the river path. I still really wanted that gelato, though. I hadn’t yet had any Italian gelato, partly because I’m a little lactose sensitive and nervous about dairy, but it had been a hot day and I had become a little obsessed with the idea of having a delicious cold treat! So after we checked in, I checked Google Maps and found a highly-rated gelato place a short walk down the road. It was easy to talk others into coming with me, and mmmm what a delicious gelato it was. (And bonus, no gut issues after all! Needless to say, I made up for my prior lack of gelato over the next few days.)
Back at the hotel, Britt wanted to watch the basketball playoffs on his phone (we used to live in Boulder, he’s a Nuggets fan). As our room was kind of small and to keep the hot sun out we had to draw the shade, I decided to go up to the rooftop balcony to read...but first I went to the lobby bar and got an Aperol Spritz to take with me. (The Aperol Spritz is an extremely popular summer drink in Italy. The NYT wrote a disparaging article about it a few years ago, so I had never bothered to make one despite Aperol being a staple of my home bar, but after drinking many of them in Italy I have to say, the haters are wrong. I am actually drinking one now, as I am writing this paragraph.)
We decided to meet as a group at a nearby bar and restaurant, Mojito, to have drinks and then dinner. But the complementary appetizers they provided were filling enough that we ended up not ordering dinner, so my “dinner” this evening was: one gelato, one Aperol Spritz, one mojito, and various fried finger foods and foccacia. Please don’t tell my mother!
Despite my dubious meal choices, I was ready to go the next morning. Today would be another relatively short day, distance-wise, but it was quite hilly, starting out with a 500-foot climb over the first mile and a half. Getting up into the hills gave us great views, though.
It was hot again, so all the climbing made us rather sweaty. Fortunately, our route took us by several small lakes, and as I’d known we might have the opportunity for a swim or two, I’d made sure that my swimsuit (okay, my swimsuit bottoms – my sportsbra could pass well enough as a top) was in my pack and easily accessible. It was wonderful to be able to jump in and splash around!
After a dip in Lake Pusiano, we rode along the length of Lago di Alserio on a forested path where various tree stumps had been carved into whimsical shapes.
Then we were back on the roads again for another big climb through a few more small towns. At the top of the hill we could see Lake Como sparkling below us in the distance. It was a fast ride down at first, but then we turned off the road onto trails again, and it was too pretty to rush through! But soon we came to the end of our ride, only about 22 miles but a lot of elevation gain and loss.
Como is a very popular tourist town, with many small piazzas surrounded by bars and gelaterias, and a big waterfront park where a festival was going on, lots of booths with food and drink, and vendors selling all sorts of things, clothes, spices, and so on. One booth was selling interesting-looking liqueurs flavored with gentian. These intrigued me, but the owner made the mistake of giving me a little to taste – yuck, no sale! Our hotel wasn’t far from the cathedral, and some of our group went to tour it, but I was more interested in gelato. Again it was quite tasty!
Como was also where I had what was, alas, my worst meal in Italy. It was my own fault, though; I hadn’t realized that the restaurant we went to was vegan. Not that vegan food is bad, but I ordered the lasagna. I mean, it was probably a decent casserole, but I’d been imagining lasagna, and it was very much not lasagna!
As our last day would be a long one, we rose early – or at least, as early as we could and still get breakfast in the hotel. All of the hotels on this trip included breakfast buffets, and the breakfasts were all fairly similar: various croissants (some filled with chocolate or fruit preserves), cakes, breads, hard-boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, thinly-sliced deli meats and cheeses, fruits, and various cereals (including a muesli or granola) with yogurt, milk, nuts, and seeds to add. I usually went for the deliciousness of a croissant and a piece of cake, a few pieces of meat or eggs, and a lot of fruit, in hopes that the healthy components would outweigh the pastries. Most of the hotels had espresso machines that we could serve ourselves from, but the nicer places would serve espresso or coffee – which was better quality, I’m sure, but you couldn’t get cup after cup as you could with the self-serve machines, alas.
As with the previous day, we’d be starting with a big hill – but this one was even longer, and a little steeper, too. I was feeling pretty good, though, and powered up the hill ahead of everyone else except for a few of the e-bike riders! After that climb, we all definitely needed more coffee, and stopped at Casa del Caffè Malnate for another dose.
It was another hot day, but again, we had a lake to stop at. Fortunately Lake Varese’s swans didn’t seem to mind us getting into the water with them.
After our swim, we were getting hungry, and we could see that our route would take us on out-of-the-way paths for a while, so we detoured to the main road (up a hill, but that was okay!) to Pepe Rosa, a pizzeria that turned out to have some delicious beer on tap, and also some really interesting and tasty pizza options. (They were also really nice about accommodating fourteen damp and somewhat muddy cyclists.) Good thing we ate heartily, because we had some hard work ahead of us!
A combination of roads and pathways led us to Ranco, a small town on Lake Maggiore and the last destination on the bike ride. We arrived and checked into the Hotel Belvedere – Britt and I were relegated to a tiny attic room on the top floor, but alas they were full and we couldn’t change it – and then just sat around the hotel’s pool, reading, chatting, and drinking Aperol Spritzes until it was time for our last dinner as a group. We all got a little loopy over wine and good food (both Britt and I had pike-perch from the lake in a sauce of anchovies, capers, and parsley, which was so good I’m going to see if I can figure out a decent recipe), but we had good reason, as we were almost all going our separate ways the next day. Some of the group had already traveled a little in Italy first, and were heading home; some were going to Cinque Terre, a famously scenic group of towns on the coast; and Britt and I were going to the Dolomites.
In the morning we shared a taxi to Angera, perhaps two miles down the coast of Lake Maggiore, where we would get the (also very short-distance) ferry to Arona, on the other side of the lake. I felt sad we didn’t have more time there, as the castle above Angera, the Rocca Borromeo di Angera, looked really interesting, and Arona also had an interesting-looking castle perched above it. But we had our itinerary set and many of our tickets already purchased – ferry to Arona, train via Milan and Verona to Trento, where we’d spend the night, and then set out the next morning via another train and a series of buses to the small ski resort town of San Vigilio di Marebbe, where we’d begin the next phase of our adventure.
In conclusion, a photo that captures the image in my mind of Lombardy - it's a place of flowers: