If you would like to see details about our journey, check out our itinerary and our bike route.
In the first days of our trip, we got a message from our host in Rimini, saying they could not accommodate our bicycles and canceling our reservation. This happens occasionally--for various reasons, a host will not want our bikes inside the accommodation and has no secure alternative for us. When I make a reservation, I always tell the host that we have bicycles and need to store them, and usually they find a solution, or else they tell us they can't and we just book another property. In this case, the host had waited until a week before we were to arrive, to tell us we couldn't stay there.
This was disappointing, but actually, we seized the opportunity to make some changes to our itinerary. The heat was proving to be a real challenge, and we were concerned about a couple of long days with many miles of climbing that we had scheduled around our stay in Rimini.
We adjusted our routes and used the cancellation policies we had paid extra for, and managed to cut about 60 miles and a couple thousand feet of climbing for the days just before and after Rimini.
We are very glad we did.
We still ended up with a long day on the road to Rimini, though the ride was fairly easy. We started out with a flat rear tire on my bike, caused by a little cut in the sidewall. Ken pumped it up, and I tried to ride gently for a few miles until the liquid inside the tubeless tire sealed the hole.
The first half of the ride was back the way we came, this time up the steep cobblestone streets in Urbino, then down 10-plus miles through the rolling hills and farms. Near the bottom of the descent, we stopped for cold water before the route branched off on new terrain, with gravel farm tracks and small paved single-lane roads until we dropped back onto the coast. We followed miles of dedicated bike path along the beach, mile after mile of hotels and beach umbrellas and restaurants and bars, all jammed with Europeans (mostly Italians) on holiday.
We found our little three-star family-run hotel a couple blocks off the beach in a quieter neighborhood., with a nice patio and bar and restaurant on the ground floor. We were given a small room with a big bathroom tucked in the back of the top floor.
After baking in the sun on the bikes all day, we decided against renting chairs and lying on the beach. Instead, we took our swimsuits in our backpacks (just in case we changed our minds) and walked a couple blocks up to the pedestrian street and had an early dinner (17:00). It was excellent. On the way back to our room, we found a shop that made its own gelato from real fresh ingredients. Molto buono.
We were in bed reading at 20:00. Our first normal bedtime on the trip.
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| On our way back down to the coast, on the same road we climbed yesterday, I was able to stop and get a photo of the third field sculpture, a swan. I did not stop yesterday because it is located in a steeper part of a hill, and I did not want to lose my momentum on the uphill climb. |
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| Real house-made gelato. We have been seeing gelaterias everywhere, but this is the first artisanal gelato we have found on this trip. |
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| Before the gelato, there were mussels. And spaghetti with clams. And a plate of grilled seafood and fish. Saluti! |
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| Every day, its seems, we end up on a gravel track. We are glad to have our gravel bikes with wide tires. |
