July 26 2018

A lovely breakfast at the best place that we have stayed at in Italy (Locanda Etrusca B&B). Fabio and his wife, Patrizio, spoke a little English and they were both so friendly and helpful.

This winter they are doing some renovations to the house, so that all the rooms are en-suite. He will be able to charge more per room. I think he could have charged more than he did, (E58.00) as the breakfast was excellent and the beds were really comfortable.

We left around 10:00 and cycled the 10.4 kms to Cecine (approximately 35 mins) where we waited for the train that was leaving at 12:20. We chatted to a German family for a while and then maneuvered the bikes onto the platform. This was the smallest lift we have used. I had to take one of my panniers of to fit in the lift and Ralf had to stand his bike on one wheel to fit in the lift.

Fortunately there was no platform change. The bike carriage had three steps up to the area where we stored the bikes. We manhandled both bikes into the area as it was a 4 hour trip and we wanted to sit and enjoy the journey and not have to hold the bikes all the way.

We also knew that the train terminated in Rome and we would have time to get the bikes down the three steps and onto the platform.

When we got into Rome a nice fella helped us off the train with the bikes. Then we had to cycle to the hostel through the madness that is Rome traffic. We organized our bags and headed out to the warmshowers (WS) host who was going to store our bikes for us while we travel to Naples and Pompeii.

Again we headed out into the madness. I had my hand very close to my horn (90 decibels) works in Rome – it didn’t in Vietnam. We got to the WS host and no-one was home. We texted Marcello, unfortunately he couldn’t wait for us to arrive. We had arranged to be at his place at about 6:00 but due to the traffic and navigation we were 45 minutes late – 6:45. He had to leave at 6:30 and wouldn’t be home until 11:30.

We have arranged to leave our bikes and gear at the hostel – we can lock everything up and hopefully it will still be here when we get back!

As we headed back to the hostel we found the Coliseum, it was sitting in the middle of a very large traffic circle!

We will be back after Naples/Pompeii, but a quick photo as we cycled around it was worth the stop.

I spotted a few lightening strikes and loud thunder rolled around the city. The heavens opened just as we arrived back to the hostel. We got a little damp, but it has cooled the air a little.

After a shower we went across the road to a local pizza place. A few tables with crowds of Italians around them. We choose three different slices of pizza, which was weighed and then heated. We ate amongst the locals who were loud, it was a great vibe.