Urbanus Magnus

The two day stay in Siena was just enough time to tour the local sites and take a bit of a break to recharge for our next cycling ride to Montalcino.  Looking over our off-line digital map and planning the cycling route with its elevation profile in advance of the trip made us a little nervous; we would be setting new personal records with our climbs.  Again being mentally prepared for the trip helped.  The ride turned out to be not as difficult as we had anticipated -  even though we ultimately climbed to an altitude of 610 meters by the time we arrived in the town of Montalcino itself, we managed to avoid steep inclines for the most part. We had a very steady climb on the way out of Siena for about an hour and a half.  We then took a break at the crest of the climb to nourish ourselves with a nice lunch that we had purchased and packed from an alimenteria before leaving Siena - fresh pane ronde con sale , local Italian pomodoros , soft formaggio an...

We arrived safely back home at around 11:30pm Toronto time Monday the 18th, after 2 stopovers (one in Frankfurt, the other in Washington, DC), and a lot of confusion in the Naples Int'l Airport. Certainly a bad experience with staff, which lead to us both nearly missing our flight, and also damage to our bicycles. But more on that will come with the Naples posting later. Internet from Rome and south of there had been extremely spotty, and expensive at times (5 euro per hour at a few of our hotels - and still slow by N. American standards), so we haven't yet posted about our visits from Siena onwards. Besides, making time for blog-writing was difficult, what with all the sights planned. For the next few days, I will be writing-up the log of the rest of the trip. So, expect Montalcino's write-up tomorrow, then that of Montepulciano on Friday, followed by posts for Orvieto, Viterbo, Rome, Pompeii, and Napoli and our returning flight in the next week-and-a-bit. After a G...