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!