Days 6 & 7: Driveling idiots

Day 6 was sometimes good progress on superstrada (during siesta it's quiet-ish) and sometimes bouncing along slowly through onion fields.

Day 7 included The Best: Stereotypically perfect lunch of bread and formagia at the base of an olive tree in a big grove. So Italian-bike-tour it was almost too trite. 

Day 7 also had The Worst: when our little road turned into a briar patch. Award for the slowest, most painstaking I have ever traveled with a bicycle. Hazard a step, unhook thorns, hazard another step, untwine leg. 

We also peeped into sweet ancient town of Pizzo, curvy streets, and origin of the famous chocolate-sauce-stuffed-icecream-ball (Tortufo). Good thing we ate them before climbing an enormous switch-backy experience. 

Also Norman castle, pea shoots roadside munch, and detour to visit BC bike shop where we reseated my front wheel and they gave us free water bottles. 

Now we're at dinner in the lovely city of Vibo Valencia, red checkered everything (I'm not making this up: curtains and tablecloths), a little informal place where the other guests seem to know the owner. All in Italian, Matthew ordered himself a plate of pasta and a salad for me, and added, "she is only a little hungry." 

"Amazing!" I said, "that was so smooth." 

"Well it took me a full minute to boot that up."  

We have had no formal Italian training, save for a couple minutes per day on Duolingo this winter, but picking up the language as we go has been thrilling. And we will make ourselves into driveling idiots to communicate in our baby Italian rather than ask anyone if they speak English. We are strongly against the American tourist entitlement that others need to speak English. 

Matthew has been loading webpages on his phone about conjugating verbs into past tense or comparatives for us to study while we wait for food. 

On our first day we had latched onto the word "perfetto" (perfect), for some reason. It was the foundation of our vocabulary. "Perfect!" to our host handing us the keys to our room, "perfect!" to a panino arriving, "perfect!" to someone possibly apologizing for something. When you have a hammer everything becomes a nail.

Yesterday we learned how to say "this" and "that", and a whole exciting level opened for us. Ordering a biscotto under a glass counter got much easier, and we can also ask "what's this called" and learn the names of things. 

"It's still a wall of sound" said Matthew, "but now the wall has cracks in it." We're playing the Word Pickup Game. We hear a word we recognize, "dolce!", "abbiamo", and look at each other wide eyed; "dolce!", "dolce!" we repeat in hushed excitement and slap each other's arms. 

And then you learn a new noun, the other day it was "piaggio" (rain) and suddenly it's like a bird you've recently IDed in the book: you see it everywhere. Not that the bird hadn't been around before, it's just now magically available. 

All of the accompanying sign language, as the hand motions in Italy go, help us enormously. The stereotype of Italians having to steer with their knees if they're talking and driving (because they need both hands for talking) indeed seems to be true. In the time it took me to pedal past two women on the sidewalk this morning, I witnessed one of them move through three unique motions: [add intensity], ["so good"], ["and then and then!"]. 

The further south we go the less English we are finding. The last English we heard was from our BnB host in Mortilla, showing us the different rooms of the place. Walking us into the kitchen, "this is the KITCHEN"; opening the door to the bathroom, "this is the BEDROOM." We enjoyed a smile about that one. 

Days 4 & 5: Lined with Rosemary

We have been slowly, and sometimes steadily, making our way south down Italy's shin and the top of the foot. 

Yesterday's (day 4) breakfast was Thanksgiving after that Sunday eve's brief famine. Breakfast in Italy is usually an espresso and a cornato (croissant), consumed standing at a bar. But this hotel had eggs, cheese, muesli (hello fiber how I miss you), fruit, and about 5 different CAKES. Good fuel for biking! 

Yesterday (day 4) our ride took us through quiet pines, switchbacks for 1,000 feet of climbing, roads lined with rosemary bushes draping down from stone walls. Olive trees. The ocean hundreds of feet below, nearly always present. Miles without cars, rugged empty hills. The weather was gusty, rapid clouds charging across the sky, mountain peaks with cloud hats, cold, but also breaking into sunshine. The sort of day where the pall of winter can still be remembered but it makes everything even more alive for it. 

At times the sky opened, and we waited out the worst of it in a bar with a bunch of white leather booths (read hip coffee spot also nightlife) in a seaside town, drinking coffee and tea. The other folks in there were sharp Italian men, one arranging his gray curls in the wall mirror while on his phone, another in black joggers, a black leather coat, and sunglasses. In our bike shorts, mismatched arm warmers and vests, we looked like a circus act advertising a secondhand store. We get lots of looks bordering on what might be disgust, or maybe just people being unfamiliar with what it's like to make your existence by bicycle. 

And then we get folks like a lady at our hotel, speaking rapidly in Italian, and miming it all out, more or less: "you're so brave to be biking! And it's cold! Be careful and don't get sick in the cold!" I love how much one can pick up from intonation and charades. 

But it's not cold. It's in the 60s during the days and 40s at night. We are blasting around glorying in the sunshine in short sleeves, while the locals are wearing puffer coats and scarves. I hear the south of Italy becomes oppressively hot in the summer, and this must be what people are adapted to.  

Indeed, it is inarguably the off-season right now. We've pedaled thru many vacation-y beach towns, shutters pulled over doors and empty patios. Ghost-town feelings abound. Restaurants are closed when you expect them to be open. The hotel we stayed at last night, this huge grand place, felt almost apocalyptic, as we might have been the only ones staying there. The lobby was fancy with potted plants and floor length mirrors, but when we came back from our walk all the lights were off and we had to feel our way to the stairs to make our way to the 5th floor. Ooof legs. 

There *was* an elevator. But it was no bigger than a coat closet, and painfully slow, in the way where you start thinking about cables and pulleys. Matthew stepped in it and could feel it sigh slightly under his weight. So we took the stairs, and laughed in that kind of groaning bad way, hauling our tired legs all the way to the 5th floor. Workmen had been painting and powering in and out of the other floors, tuning up for the next season maybe, so I suppose they wanted us out of the way.

The room had all of three outlets. And a dark lamp with a cord wound uselessly around it's base. And a silent and empty mini fridge parked on a wall, no outlet within meters. Ha! 

We had tin fish and delicious pesto from a small tub, and a box of green leaves, and bad wine (1.79€ for a liter!) for dinner. 

I was delighted to have a proper sleep, the first one in nights. I'd been lucky to find some valerian herb and chamomile and melatonin (in a chain store named "Conad"). Sleeping is really just gold. 

Today our ride could be titled Behind The Scenes, as Matthew had cleverly stitched together little snaking ways to avoid biking on the highway. Which sometimes involved hefting our bikes over a mound of rubble and dirt, biking on sandy gravel directly next to the beach, threading through a construction zone pathway lined with orange fence, and tracing through closed beach house backyards. 

Our progress was slow but the sense of charting our own course was exhilarating. "I never know if it's going to work when I go around a turn!" said Matthew. But we only hit a true deadend once (between railroad tracks and private homes). We have our route loaded into my little bike computer with GPS (we make it the night before on hotel wifi), which I've never before had on a bike trip, and it has saved so much pained pinching of Google maps on one's phone and wrong turns. 

Tonight we are staying in a wee and ancient hill town, Cetraro, overlooking the ocean. A magical place, again we are all disbelief that it exists and I randomly happened to find it on Booking.com. We did *some* guidebook reading before we left the US, but most of our plans are built as we go. 

Our BnB is on a tiny street, up a tiny staircase, and on a tiny hallway. There are two rooms in the place. It feels like a treehouse overlooking the street. 

Walking around town, we saw a sign that more or less translated to, "something notable happened here in 1190." 1190! To me, these four numbers don't even read as a date it's so old. This place is iterative upon iterative, humans living perched on this hill for countless generations. Matthew and I are absolutely enraptured with how it feels: the old stone walls, the narrow passageways (are these alleys?) too narrow for cars, the staircases winding up and down to other levels. It's all so different from the American strip malls and wide roads and endless parking lots that it feels like we could be in a Disney made-up place. 

But we are the only foreigners here in this off-season moment. It feels so special not to be catered to, to find nothing in English, but it also means there is a lot we can't communicate or understand. Our BnB host had some English and we had our bits of Italian (but we are learning every day!) and with a little support from Google Translate we had lots of laughs and got by just fine. Plenty of "huh!" and "uhmmmm" and stirring our hands around in the International sign for, "I can't think of that word but I'm trying hard!" 

Day 3: Road Obliterated

After staring intently at the inside of my eyelids, counting to ten repeatedly in Italian, almost-enjoying the loud party of late-night Italians speaking all at once like many pots of water boiling, and reading a NYer illuminated by bike taillight, I decided to explore more this new-found inability to sleep. 

And it's not like we had a huge dinner and wine, like the last night when I couldn't sleep. In fact, dinner went something like this: 

Matthew: Would you like to join me on the balcony for some...bread and water? 

Sondra: Did you want the last oat cookie? 

Matthew: No you should eat it babe.

Sondra: Are you sure? I had the second to last one....

Because we learned the hard way that en Domenica en Italia, not a single grocery store is going to be open. The only food would have been very fancy restaurants (which we didn't want to navigate) or the gelato shops, which seemed to be trying to compensate for the lack of elsewhere by remaining open until 3am (!?). 

Anyway, according to Lady Google it seems that circadian rhythms can take a while to recenter, especially when traveling east, and that the travel insomnia is not uncommon. But it sure is unfun. The best shortcut to morning is sleeping. I just assumed all this fresh air and exercise would fix me but apparently no. 

Matthew, bless him, could represent our nation in the International Sleep Olympics and is much less sensitive to all things. So at least one of us is functional. 

Yesterday's theme was Hike-a-Bike day; one can read a map all they want and try to game out the route to avoid bad traffic, find good roads, stay off blithering steep climbs. But then you find yourself scrabbling vertically up a gravel path, complete with bits of old terracotta roofing tile to fill in the low spots, through an olive grove. Eventually we popped into a sweet town center, swung our legs back over our bikes, and carried on. 

We also encountered this normal seeming road, that included a random segment of wall. 

And finally, once we swooped back down to ocean side, and were admiring the craggy cliffs taller than sky scrapers, with caves bigger than houses, we came across a barrier in the road. Of course, on a bicycle, you weave around it and squeeze through the fence. 

What were we going to find? 

The enormous remnants of a landslide was what. Boulders and rock fragments and dust and stones and more boulders obliterated all trace of a roadway. 

We carried our bikes up and into the pile and then across the boulders, past the parked excavation equipment and discovered a velvet road on the other side, only for us. Delicious. 

"Who needs a honeymoon when you can have an adventure?" I sung out to Matthew. 

But at our oceanside hotel in the napping vacation town of Marina di Camerota, we did indeed feel like a honeymoon. We had all afternoon to relax on our wee balcony, laze on the bed with the sun coming onto it directly; a luscious empty afternoon. We spent the time writing Italian words on note paper and mumbling to ourselves. Matthew designed a cheat-sheet for conjugating our favorite verbs in past tense. 

Later that evening we strolled the narrow streets of the town. Matthew reached into his pocket and pulled out the paper, "I am about to SAY SOMETHING". 

And now the moment I've been waiting HOURS for: the hotel is finally serving breakfast. Ciao! 

Day 2: "You are Bike!"

Yesterday was a little lifetime in a day somehow: 100 kilometers, a Greek temple, counting 117 other cyclists on the road with us (almost all were fancy men in fancy Lycra), making a friend with one named Giovanni, our first night out at a proper restaurant, and for me, wasting away until 1am without sleeping. 

Learned there that a big meal of mussels and two glasses of wine at the normal Italian eating time (they didn't even open until 7:30pm) will ruin me. Eeking around on 5-hrs sleep today after a tortuous night has made me especially grateful for the ability to take it slow (it is Domenica afterall) and for Matthew's endless patience and care. 

It was amazing to see the big families with young children pouring into the restaurant at 8:45pm to start dinner. The children waved their pizza slices around and made squeaky noises just like kiddos in the states, but apparently putting the kids to bed early isn't a thing here. 

That stop for the Greek temple was for Poseidon, the God of the sea, and Matthew put it best: "the history has history here!", meaning that when the ancient Romans moved in they would have found EVEN MORE ancient Greek stuff left over. Like a temple. Incredible.  

On our ride yesterday we said "ciao!" to a cyclist who was going slow enough that even loaded us could pass him. He gave a hearty "ciao!" back and said some other Italian things. Of course which we couldnt understand. But riding at the same pace, we shouted back and forth a bit and we knew enough Italian to figure out he wanted to buy us a coffee. 

And so we made friends with Giovanni. He had 100 words of English and we had 30 words in Italian, and so we put our few belongings together and communicated like 3-year olds. This felt incredibly invigorating. We could point at things and say, "come sei dice..." and so I learned words for parts of the bike. 

We finished our coffees, thanked him, shook hands all smiles. He gave us a big thumbs up and as he left he said, "You are bike!" Indeed, the connection among cyclists breaks bounds of even language. 

Another favorite part of the day was a tall climb up to a sleepy hilltop town overlooking the ocean, then descending with switchbacks so packed the map looked like a bundle of string. The sun sparkled on the teal ocean below and we marvelled and slapped ourselves over how beautiful it was. 

First Day Biking: THESE are artichokes!

Time to start the bike ride part! 

When I swung my leg over my bike Greenie Meanie, all loaded outside our AirBnB on our first day in that little town Sorrento, I had no idea what to expect. Traffic stress at least. The main road was a steady morning stream of Fiats, mini trucks, Vespas, and motorbikes. After waiting for a while, we realized there wasn't going to be a big fat break so we just sort of poured ourselves into the flow. I felt tense a bit as we climbed out of town, and we stopped multiple times to remove a layer, adjust a rubbing brake, dig out a face covering for all the diesel exhaust. 

But the little cars gave us space, and gently wove around us (while in USA I'm always ready for a Ford 150 truck to apply the gas pedal to the floor as it passes me). We climbed the switchbacks up out of town. I unwound and relaxed, realizing almost all of the cars were half the size of the vehicles in the US. I began to look around. "THESE are artichokes!" I exclaimed to Matthew. And olive trees growing dryly and impossibly on the slope of the hill. 

Vehicles coming down the switchbacks gave little toots, a friendly "scusi! coming thru!". Horns here are communicative rather than angry. Vespas zipped like little bees around us. Everyone seemed quite disinterested in our colorful-loaded-bike presence but never disrespectful. I didn't feel impatience resonating from any of the drivers as they waited to pass on the curves. Tiny, zig-zaggy roads. The whole experience was quite put-put and flowy. 

And then we got to the Amalfi coast and could barely move for blathering over how gorgeous it was. Ragged rock loomed so tall straight out of the bright ocean you had the crane your neck to see the top of it. The road hugged the edge of this rock as if it were a curving shelf. Hundreds of meters below was the teal water. Cars, buses, fancy Italian men on fancy carbon bikes, and us oddballs all peacefully curved along this stunningly beautiful ribbon road. 

The scene felt like a Disney movie set in a place of Far-away Magic, the teal water, the looming crags, the houses stacked impossibly vertical on the hillside's shoulder. The whole scene was so perfectly pleasing we only shut up gushing about it if we were climbing up a rise. And there were tunnels! 

This place was so beautiful I wondered how has the entire planet not heard about this and come here? Why was every human not on bikes along with us, experiencing this bliss? 

Well there certainly were a lot of people enjoying it too. At one point the road was very narrow, and two opposing buses had caused traffic to bunch up for a long line. Sitting in this, breathing diesel, felt very unattractive. The Vespas wove to the right of the stalled cars on the shoulder, then down the middle of the stuffed road to the left of them, threading thru the openings and escaping. We decided to WWVD (what would Vespas do) and try this ourselves. I felt so resourceful and resilient squeezing between a stopped bus and a creeping Fiat, barely wide enough for my panniers, escaping the Tetris. I'm sure tunneling thru a traffic jam sounds absolutely terrifying to those in the US reading this, but here it somehow felt protected, calm, possible. None of the stuck drivers seemed aggravated or angry. You could just look out over the teal water, blink in the sunshine, and sate yourself with an incredible view as you waited. 

The night before in Sorrento, we had a similar traffic navigation learning experience as we padded about on foot. Waiting on the sidewalk to cross the dark street, we stood there for no short period getting impatient. Then appeared an older gentleman on our sidewalk and he just set foot into the street. He didn't even stutter his step or change pace. The cars flowed around him gracefully. To us he appeared like Jesus walking on water. This was completely normal apparently. People on foot! Respectful cars! 

We decided to try this; we stepped off the curb and for us the cars slowed too, as if choreographed, no sudden slams of brakes like you get in the US where drivers seem surprised to see humans walking. 

Back to the road, the sunshine, how was this incredible beauty seemingly endless? Pedaling thru little towns posted on hilltops, lemon trees perched in miniscule front lawns the only seeming flat places, laundry hanging from wraught balconies. 

Time for a morning coffee. Two tiny tables on the miniature sidewalk outside "Bar Internazionale" seemed to be the place? Here, "bar" is for coffee in the morning and alcohol drinks at night; there seem to be no "coffee shops". Ah the fun of discovering the ways of a place! 

Inside the bar, a group of four older Italian gentlemen (grey sweaters, puffy coats, drivers caps, statuesque features) we're drinking espressi. They all talked at once, slapping each other's shoulders with loving roughness; I can't speak the language but I can identify companionable teasing. Wonder how long these men have known each other? Each other's families? Ah small towns...

People were not sitting and working on laptops with plush headphones like in American coffee shops. Here people bunch at the bar, down their espresso, stand in the doorway eating a pastry in a paper napkin. These little local bars are so enticing and so intimidating to me, because everyone seems to know everyone, and they are spaces no larger than a big closet sometimes. And the ordering, downing, and paying happens so fluidly it makes me feel like a hiccup-y outsider. 

Which is the point of traveling I suppose. To feel completely out of your element and enjoy the bemusing novelty of everything. 

And to be constantly perplexed by everyday things. For instance, the number of times I've inadvertently locked myself in a bathroom has become embarrassing. I can't seem to intuit the right combination of key and knob turning? Rummaging noises result, with me imagining the next number of hours sighing away alone with a toilet...until sproing! the door gives way as if nothing had happened. I've done this at least once a day so far. Matthew is finding this hysterical. 

So I order us cappuccinos at the Bar, and we take them outside and more or less sit IN the intersection the sidewalk is so narrow. Bus wheels roll right by our feet. This was an amazing experience for me, being on the hill, in this town, our bikes parked across the street against the stone wall with the Vespas. The cappuccino! The foam was so thick it could have stood up without the supportive cup. 

And so went the first day. Enraptured by everything. 

Italy Arrival with Popp-oh Corn-oh (Day 1)

Before we get to the narrative...

What? Matthew and I are taking our honeymoon with bicycles!

Where? Southern Italy.

When? mid-March till mid-April.

Why? We needed to choose a place where neither of us has been before (ruling out Latin America), that had favorable weather in early spring, and was suitable for bike travel. And tie-breaker: Italy has more varieties of cheese than does Greece, so there we are.

How? Flying into Rome, we're taking the trains to Sorrento, then biking from small town to small town, eating ourselves into bliss and staying in little hotels along the way.

Little needs to be said of our red-eye flight to Rome. Matthew had a break in consciousness, and even though I was contained in a self sealed hat over eyes, ear plugs and mask, I mostly just rearranged my body from one bony discomfort to same.

The entry into Italy through customs made me laugh at it's nonchalance. The policeman at the usually intimidating counter slouched over his phone; he waved me forward disinterestedly and I opened my passport on the counter. He then returned to tapping out a lengthy text message as I stood waiting. Long enough that I wondered if he was aware of my presence. Finally, he hit send, looked up, briefly compared my face to my passport, and gave me a hardy stamp. No questioning what I was going to do in his country, how long I was staying, nothing. I laughed walking away.  

Reuniting with our bicycle boxes in the giant luggage room felt amazing. Then we had impossibly awkward pieces of cargo to heft along with us. I carry my bike then my bike will carry me. 

It's wonderful how my first experience of Italy has fit exactly how one would imagine: in the Napoli train station, the men in grey sweaters, elbows on the espresso counter, holding miniature glass cups all foamy, gesticulating pointedly with the other hand holding a cigarette.

Other Impressions in our first 4 hours here: so much smoking (ladies too, not just dudes, like in Latin America where I've traveled), terracotta roofs, narrow women sporting big mascara, bright white sneakers, moviestar sunglasses. Opuntia cacti grow as weeds! Farm fields are bright green, the surge of spring growth. Orange trees. Pastries and coffees.

We'd been wondering to ourselves, "what will be the first thing we eat in Italy", because indeed when we've announced we're traveling here everyone lights up and goes, "BUT THE FOOD!"

It was a train-station desperation purchase, feeling diminished from paltry sleep, and hauling two supersized boxes around, I had gotten that crash of hunger. Croissant sandwiches of various persuasions lined up under a glass counter and I chose one that would have been twice as expensive in Ithaca: smoked salmon. Its croissant was topped with flaxseed and the layers of it lifted off from each other. And in the layers were poppyseeds. Seeds! Rolls of goat cheese fell out the edges and flecks of arugula left me craving more green. It was heaven--no apologies for sounding trite here-- eaten in a dark subway tunnel as we leaned against our boxes.

Navigating the 250 miles from Rome to Sorrento (where we commence our cycle trip) on public transport has been a perplexing labyrinth of ticket counters, platforms, signage, immense time-tables. Surging crowds of fashionable people. Matthew, blessings on his head, researched the various train companies, departure times, and ticket purchasing options before we arrived. I would have been lost for days without him. Still, we spent no small amount of time with me posted up with our boxes parked by a wall, with him charging off to wayfind which turn down which crowded passageway would be next.

We carry the two boxes between us, each person grabbing a handhold of each box. Flowing along. How about that for a test of marriage success? My hands are red from the cardboard edges.

On the train to Napoli, I wove my way down the train cars to the beverage car and ordered an espresso from Snr Caffe. My first opportunity to try speaking a little Italian! And so it goes: my order for coffee and a little milk, please, all came rattling out in Spanish. Jaja!

While I was there, a squishy-looking British lad said in English to Snr Caffe, "toe wah tahs". Snr Caffe looked confused, and even though I couldn't even speak Italian, I translated for Squishy. "Acqua, per favore, duo." Seeing a look of recognition on Snr Caffe's face was most satisfying. Then an American lad came to the counter. "I want popcorn" he said. The way he said it, "Pop corn" has the same cadence as "acqua" and so Snr Caffe plopped him a carton of water. America looked confused. "No, pop corn" he said more carefully. "Ah!" crowded Snr Caffe, "Popp-oh corn-oh!" It was so spectacularly Italian, and I left the car weaving back with huge smiles.

bike boxes the most awkward luggage

train to Sorrento from Napoli

flight to Roma! 

surprisingly scrumptious first food purchase