Bike ride from Siena on May 29th with Jacopo 5/30/13

"Come va?" This is Day 7 in Italy and I finally hit half way conversation like exchange with a taxi driver from the hotel in Florence. We are taking a train to Siena to meet up with Jacopo. He picked up bikes from the next town and set up a route. His answer contained it is a bad weather and all. Yeah, I can handle small talk with weather. So I asked that would sound like if the weather is going to stay bad and he answered after lunch, it would get better. I had already checked out Siena’s weather and we have no rain gears.

Only the day before, I was not all sure if I can ride at all. Some of my friends may remember all the mess I went through with my newly found allergy. I never got a chance to follow through the part two of allergy test therefore my treatment has not started. The allergist said I would have no problem Italy because it is a new environment. She even said I would not have to bring medicine. The main doctor and everybody else told me to bring them anyway because I wouldn't want to waste my vacation time to see a doctor. Well, there may not be mountain cedars, but there are tons of smokers. And don't forget ear problems with motion sickness. I managed to be a good tour participant at reasonable level, but on last day of Giro, I was already looking for pharmacies in Bresia city circuit. But I figured they are not open on Sundays. When Giro tour got done, I was thinking that I am going to have to hit urgent care as soon as I pick up Lady the Dog. First destination after the tour to be Venice didn't help either. I suggested to Tony Tuesday morning, before we take the train to Florence to be the catch up and rest day. All I recall Monday night was Tony saying "You should change to pajamas at some point." I knew I needed to reverse the direction and I needed medicines, but too sick to get them myself. On Tuesday morning, Hubby woke up early and he was on a mission. He got on the Internet to find out possible Italian names of medicine I needed. Then he ventured out to the street and he found a pharmacy and learned that it won't be open until later, but came back of lots of bottles of acqua naturale (still water with no gas opposed to fizzy water Tony likes). After breakfast, he made the second trip and came back with goodies. He scored best possible good husband points and I got all better.

As promised, Jacopo was waiting on the train platform and immediately spotted us. He is a Siena local and I found him as a professional photographer on the Internet. It was Marco's suggestion to get out of Florence and travel to Siena to ride. So he hooked us up with Jacopo. After making all the arrangements, we finally looked at the guidebook and found Siena to be one of the 10 must place to visit. Jacopo explained Siena has a famous building in piazza and especially for horse racing that happens in July and August. Later tony recognized the event and told me that people get really crazy like riding bulls in Spain.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/BS68xKcHTMU


We were getting out of train station and trying to get to quieter road. Jacopo pointed to the sign that says “Le Tolfe” and that is the turn you make to his house. Shortly after, my right contact lens fell and stayed on the sunglasses for a while then it flew off as we were going quite fast. I stopped two guys and looked for a spare lens in my saddle bag, but I didn't find any. Oh, well, it is funky, but I can still ride. Soon we were riding in the beautiful woods. Roads are narrow, but drivers are used to cyclists, maybe and patiently wait for safe spot to pass us. Tony said vehicles, in general, are smaller and it is easy to share the road. My next obligation as the only female in the team was to stop the guys again for my personal needs. I needed bathroom break and it was numero due (2). Jacopo found a little spot that I could go down in the woods away from them and the civilization to take care of my business while two are catching up on California wine and Chianti wine.

A few more miles and Jacopo made a planned stop in piazza. Gaiole in Chianti Piazza He explained that the rooster statue was made by his friend and explained about vintage bike ride called L'Eroica. Chris Bright from Oregon's accounts Tony was bragging about his ancient French bike he still uses often on Kinetic. Then he takes out a postcard saying that is his house on the farm. He said he lives in a small building and his parents live in a bigger. Later I took a good look and that is for his agriculturismo business, "Villa Caselunghe", where people stay in farm houses instead of hotels. http://www.caselunghe.it/ Folks, so if you want, you can stay in Jacopo's farm, get him as a guide a day or two in Siena! Then he talks about of growing olive and grape trees and olives are hard to maintain so they only make enough olive oil basically for themselves and the guests during summer. He opens up a map and explains us the basic idea of today's route, saying we will go up to see the castle and have lunch. Castles? Aren't they usually somewhere really high up? And he said climb???

We made a left turn from a main road and did quite a good climbing to get to a restaurant, Il Carlino d'oro, near Brolio Castle. The photo on top of this page is view from the resturant. I had Ribollita, Tuscan soup with vegetable and Tuscan Sausage while we talk more about wine and sports. Jacopo talked about his trips to US while emptying half a liter wine. I totally melted with the scenery, but we had to finish the loop and get back to Siena to catch a train back to Florence. I thought after doing THAT much climbing, all we have to do is to descend, especially after seeing Jacopo pointing to Siena “skyscrapers” in distance. WRONG! The course went up and down, up and down. I will add Garmin data later, but Tony thinks we did about 65km. We safely all came back to Siena station and took a train ride back to Florence. What a special ride!