Bob needed air in his little tire but neither of our tire pumps would fit so we had our excuse to sleep in a little since the bike store across the street didn't open until 8:00. We hid our bike boxes at the back of the hotel's luggage room and headed out into the wild wild traffic.
One last stop at one of the grand entrances in the Roman Wall to top off Matt's tires and the real adventure began.
Even as we left, there were still a lot of landmarks to ping back and forth to. Not sure the significance of this pyramid but it looked kind of cool.
We tried staying off of the main roads as much as possible and found some interesting ways through parks and side streets. Only one turned into a dead end. We ended up by some kind of gypsy camp... maybe a Roman version of a carnival camp, not really sure. But as we turned around a pack of small kids spotted us and came running after us wanting a ride on Bob.
Once we rode off of our detailed city map, we were on our own to find the small side roads. We ended up taking out the compass and figured as long as we were heading the right direction, that was good enough. We even followed this canal for a while but it worked out great. Seemed we couldn't make a wrong turn.
We weren't quite sure where we were but the roads were still going the right direction. We parted with the canal for a while, then came to one of our first hills, it was just a bridge that went over a canal (same one I think, but not sure). Anyway, at the top of the bridge we were very happily surprised when we saw the sea for the very first time. A few more minutes and we were there.
A few more miles, and we set up camp.
7-June: Beach Camp to Rain Camp
We passed through a number of harbor towns as we pedaled south. We only road about 40 miles this day.
Just as we were about to give up on Italian food, we stumbled into a small restaurant a little ways off the road. This was Antonio's place and he made some very excellent (although meatless) spaghetti. He also shared some very good home made wine with us and we had a lot of fun stumbling through a conversation with him and another patron that was eating there at the time (the dog lady... we never did catch her name). They thought we were pretty nuts for our style of vacationing.
We found a campground by the beach (forgot to take a picture) and spent a few hours dozing under an umbrella and swimming in the ocean. We were getting hungry but were getting tired of eating dry sandwiches and meatless spaghetti. Then we remembered seeing a sign for a Mc Donald's and decided to go in search of. Well, five miles out we still hadn't found the all American cuisine so we stopped at one of the many pizzerias that we had passed on our way out. They lifted up the two pans of pizza that had been sitting in the display case for who knows how long and we decided to keep searching. They didn't listen and began cutting up the pie with scissors. They really wanted us to eat that stuff. We left and headed towards camp. By this time, all the restaurants and pizzerias that we had passed on our way out were closed. We ended up eating at a restaurant only a few hundred yards from our camp. Still, we'd switch it with a Domino's extravaganza any day. They just don't know how pizza should be made over here.
That night a thunder stormed rolled overhead and lit things up as it dumped on us for an hour or so. We had everything bundled up so it was more entertaining than anything else. We were glad however, that we weren't camping on the beach that night.
8-June: Beach Camp in Spiagia to Rain Camp next to L. di Fogliano
We ended up on the highway for several miles, but tried to find the back roads whenever possible.
If more of the road signs were as clear as this one getting to where we wanted to go would be a breeze. But in reality, we were guessing most of the time.
Everyone was still gearing up for tourist season which starts in a couple of weeks when the schools let out. It was hard to imagine this beach being filled to capacity. It was even harder to imagine how much more crowed the roads were about to become.
The city on the hill in the background is Sperlonga. This was a treat up close too.
It was obviously built before they needed cars to get around in. The vias (streets) were just an arms width and it had stairs leading every which way.
This was an amazing place to explore and everywhere you turned there was another amazing perspective.
The farther south we went, the bigger the expected tourist turnout seemed to be. All of these beaches were empty but ready to go. We met a Canadian who visited every year (in-laws)... he said July and August were the months to avoid. I guess we hit it right.
We rode a few more hours... ran across a Mc Donald's around dinner time... I've got to admit, it tasted pretty good, even though I almost NEVER eat there at home.
We rolled into a campground around 8:30 and set up camp. It sprinkled a little that night but nothing like the night before. Seems like there's something that jumps out to offer a way to identify each place we go and for this campground it was a strange animal sound coming from the covered vineyard next to the campground. We couldn't figure out what it was, sometimes it quacked like a duck, and then it sounded more like a cat in heat, and then it sounded like a someone snoring.