July 16, 2018

 The weather rolled in again and we were listening to rain pounding on the tent for a couple of hours (another reason not to camp).

At 6:30 we were awake, surprisingly to a dry tent. We packed the tent, and as we were unable to get juice or milk for our cereal headed into Town to find the elusive Spar. The camp restaurant/bar was open but only serving Espresso coffee for breakfast! We never did find the Spar store, but we did find a supermarket which opened at 8:30. I bought some bread, cheese and meat and a couple of bananas and a cappuccino drink and we ate outside the supermarket.

After a breakfast fit for cyclists, we tried to find our way back to the Alpe di Adria cycle route. We couldn’t find it and decided to follow the road towards Udine. By some amazing coincidence we reconnected with the Alpe Di Adria and were able to follow it for the rest of the day to Pamplanova.

We are now away from the South Tirol and the Dolomites, and are heading down towards Venice. We have dropped over 1000 metres in three days and are in the flat lands again.

The route today was very nice, we had some little climbs, usually when the route took us through small villages and we had a tail wind. However, the weather was really hot – at noon it was over 34 degrees. Even the sunflowers were drooping.  We should start earlier and finish by noon or 2:00 at the latest.

Grossest thing happened today, slug juice on my leg. Due to all the rain over the past few days there was hundreds of slugs on the route, I squished a big one and it got stuck on my tire, as the tire got to my fender the slug landed on my leg – yuck.

We often see the oddest things on our trips.  We had been routed through this small village and came across an old theme park.  At first view it looked like a miniature village – then when we stopped most of the exhibits were of religious buildings, mosques, the stable where Jesus was born, synagogues, and other churches.  I don\’t think they get many visitors.

We stopped in Udine to go to the bank and were really surprised to find a lovely historic City. The route had outskirted us through the boring part of the City and bought us straight into the older city.

We could have spent more time here but it was getting hot by lunchtime and we wanted to get to Palmanova as I knew it was going to be a Town worth spending some time wandering around.

We arrived in Palmanova at about 2:00 and cycled into the centre. As we were about to enter the Venetian walled city Ralf looked at his garmin. He took a photo of the route to the hotel! Amazing.

The city is based on a grid system, it has grass mounds protecting the outer walls, then a moat, then fortified buildings, then the city which eventually leads to a large central piazza. Around the piazza there are restaurants, ice-cream stores and bars.

Our new routine on getting to our destination is plug everything in – garmins, computers, iPad, wash cycle gear and shower and then go and investigate the city/town. After eating we then head back to the hotel to find our next port of call, plan the route and update the blog.