One of the charming...

....things about Italy is the old people coming over to chat with you. They know you can't speak Italian and neither can they speak any English. Still, they find it worthwhile to spend some time with you to figure out where you come from and what you're doing in Italy. This guy, for example,  had bad hearing and didn't speak or understand a single word English. He spoke to(!) us for about 10 minutes and we did understand that he was an old cyclist. Nice chap!

Dan Gold heading even further east

Swimming in the Adriatic Sea

Mission completed!!!

After 90km without any lunchbreak, we reached the city if Ancona on the east coast of Italy, and we have a beautiful view out on the Adriatic Sea. Today we averaged 32km per hour, and legs were better than ever....probably due to the fact that we had a net decent of 300 meters. All in all a fantastic trip, well worth all the struggle we've had up the steapest hills. Now we will have a short lunch in Ancona before we head southwest towards Rome.

Well deserved spa after 102km

At 1515 we reached Castelraimondo (Raymond's Castle). Today's stage took us 102km eastbound. We climbed 1250 meters and highest elevation was 818 meters. Different landscape than the two previous day, but still very nice. Started to rain heavily the last 500 meters, so we pushed our bikes to 45 kmh in the slight ascent to the hotel.

The hotel is a beautiful spa-hotel and that suits our sligthly tired, but still gourgeous looking bodies, perfect. We are now relaxing in the pool and waiting for the bar to open so we can get ourselves a well deserved bierra.

Cheers.

Highest point of the trip

At last we reach the highest point og Crossing Italy 09, Passo Cornelio at 818 meters. Now it is mostly downhill to Castelraimondo where we stop for the day.

Finally - a lunch break

After 70km we reached Bagnara at an altitude of 644 m. We have climed a total of 1050 meters today, and I dare to say that this has so far been the hardest day for the group. Saying that we're still highly motivated and doing the last 30km will be like stealing ice cream from a 3 year old boy.

We are now about to enjoy lunch at Bagnara's only restaurant (?). Actually it is not a restaurant, but a shop where they sell more or less everything and the women working here offered to pull something together for us.

35 km so far today

Casacastalda is a nice small village on top of a hill. Looking at the map trying to decide where to go next :-)

Perugia

As you can see from this picture, my 3 co-riders, all with aerodynamic haircuts, are quite happy after reaching the top of Perugia City. We climbed a bit more than we expected today, close to 1500 meters. Now we are waiting for our driver Eirik, and we enjoy a well deserved break with cold beers and icecream.

Lunch in Castiglione del Lago

70km so far today, and the weather is just as nice as yesterday, with tempratures at 25++. We have climed a total of 950m of climbing so far today, and the rest of the stage in to Perugia should be pretty flat. Still lots of power in our legs, so we are quite optimistic that the rest of the trip will be a piece of cake. After lunch will head south of Lago Trasimeno, and we have just short of 50km left today.

Tourists in Italy

Today we have taken some detours to see some of tourist towns, like Montepulciano. We strolled up and down town for an hour, and finally Øyvind and Kjetil managed to find some Italian gelato. Here we are at the square on top of the city, altitude 607m.

Brunello yesterday, Brunello today

Earlybirds get the nicest view

We had a nice dinner yesterday, but being tired after the fairly tough journey we were early in bed. But those in bed early get up first in the morning and are blessed with this beautiful view of the sunrise over the Tuscan hills.

Day 2 is about to start.....