Craig's blog

We had our pre-ride briefing this morning at 8:30.  We had rolling hills and beautiful views all the way to lunch, which was 43 km.  I rode with Katie and Patty.  I stopped many times to take pictures as it was very picturesque.  Sunflowers, vineyards, hills, villas, nice clouds.   It also gave me the opportunity to ride pretty hard (in bursts) to catch up to Patty and Katie.  There was a shuttle option to lunch about 2/3 of the way, but Katie chose to ride on.  Jessie shuttled to lunch.  She said she had a nice ride to the shuttle point with Martha (11 years old) and her Dad, Chris and Auntie Diane.  Maddie and Kelli got to lunch first.  Maddie is on a mission to ride quickly!

We had lunch in the town of Castiglione del Lago.  The nine of us sat down in the restaurant right when it opened and ordered our lunch.  Our salads came quickly, but our main dishes didn’t come for about 45 minutes.  In the meantime all the other tables filled up and were served.  It was frustrating as it took all our time for visiting the town. It started raining as we finished and rained while we walked back to our bikes.

The kids loaded into the shuttle for an afternoon of sailing on the lake and the adults got back on the bikes for the final 26 km to the hotel.  Our ride was pleasant – it stopped raining within 5 minutes of our departure and we went at a leisurely pace.  The end included a decent climb to the town of Cortona where we are staying.

The place we’re staying is called Villa Baldelli.  It’s a medieval villa that in many ways seems original (and of course in other ways doesn’t).  Everything is made of stone and is very uneven.  The floor of our room sinks toward the middle a fair bit (maybe 10 inches).  It’s very cool.

Patty and I hung out by the pool after the ride.  The girls didn’t get back until 6:00 because their sailing adventure didn’t work out quite as planned.  They sailed out, but had to motor back because of high winds and it took a very long time.

We shuttled to the top of the town for dinner where we had another very slow, but good dinner and some gelato before shuttling back.  The town center was very interesting – built on a very steep hill, the roads are old cobblestones, narrow and very steep.  We got back around 10:00.

Tomorrow we take a bus to the Chianti region in the morning before starting our ride.