Craig's blog

Today we bussed to the Chianti region after breakfast and arrived around 10:30.  We started our ride at a castle (Castello di Brolio in Chianti) and quickly found that the terrain is pretty different in Chianti.  It is largely forested with oak, as opposed to few trees and lots of vineyards previously.  We road to the town of Radda in Chianti for lunch.  This was the toughest ride to lunch we’ve had with 1800 ft. of elevation gain in a 17 mile ride.  Kelli, Katie and Maddie all rode all the way, while Jessie got a “bump” up the final climb in the shuttle.  One of the other dads (Chris) and I ate quickly, because there was an option to do a mini-pass after the afternoon ride and we wanted to get it in.  We took off at 1:00 and rode the afternoon ride (13 miles, 1300 ft of elevation gain) back to the hotel.  We then set off on the bonus ride.  It was beautiful.  There are no big mountains in Tuscany, but no end of hills, and our ride took us up and down various hills and over one of the higher saddles in the hills.  It was more forested than we had seen previously, and we covered the 25 miles and 2,600 ft of elevation gain in 2 hours.  It was a great ride – but we were pretty tired at the end.  We enjoyed good weather all day.

Patty and the girls took more time in Radda and she bought Chianti Classico jerseys for the two of us there.  Patty rode back with Doug Klein and the girls shuttled back.

At 6:15, there was a wine tasting in our hotel (arranged for the Backroads adults) which was led by an Italian woman that was excellent at describing various aspects of the wines she presented (at least for neophytes like Patty and me).  Much of the discussion was around Chianti Classico which is obviously what the region is known for.  It wasn’t our favorite wine, but it was fun to learn about it.

After the wine tasting, the adults shuttled to a restaurant (Il Vescovino) in Panazano for dinner.  It was excellent (as was the case with most of the food we've eaten in Italy) and it was fun to sit with just the adults and get to know some of them better.

While we were wine tasting and eating dinner, the kids all went to a home where an older Italian couple taught them to make pizza  (using a real wood oven) and biscotti.  While the girls weren’t really looking forward to it, they all really enjoyed it.

It was a great day of hard riding and great eating.  J