If you would like to see details about our journey, check out our itinerary and our bike route.
This was a big day, marking the end of the first section of our tour: we took a train from Ravenna to Verona. We are always a little anxious when we take the bikes on trains. In Italy, they are allowed on most local and regional trains, but never on the fast trains and usually not on city trains. Since our last trip to Italy, it has become a little easier to navigate that system, as the Trenitalia app allows one to set a filter to see only trains that allow bikes, and to purchase a ticket for a bike along with one's own ticket.
But there are other sticky points in a train journey with bikes. Once at the station, you need to get your loaded bike to the correct platform, which often means hauling it down steep stairs, through one or more underground tunnels, and back up steep stairs. And, of course, there are those last-minute platform changes, when you have to do this along with a hundred or so people jamming the stairs and tunnels, in just a few minutes.
Then, when the train arrives, you have to find the car with a bicycle on it, which means it has storage space for bikes. And figure out how to open the door to that car. And haul the bike up into the car. And store it. All within the minute or two that the train is at the station. And often jockeying for space with three or four other people who are trying to get their bikes on the car. And working around people who don't realize it is a bicycle car and are trying to load themselves and suitcases and strollers onto it.
Then you have to go through all of that in reverse when you depart the train.
In this case, we also had to change trains in Bologna, a large station, within 9 minutes.
This is one of the situations that makes us concerned just a bit about being older. We need to run with all our gear, think fast, adapt to changes, and be strong enough to throw those bikes around without injuring others, ourselves, or the bikes.
We had no problems at all. The train from Bologna to Verona was crowded, and the bikes had their own car, so we just stowed ourselves with them and sat on the floor and ate our lunch. It felt just like it did fifty-three years ago, when my sister and I rode with our bikes in Germany.
We are spending three days in Verona and Vicenza because our neighbors, Fred and Linda, were there and loved it--the art, the architecture, the history.
Verona has it all, but like San Marino, it is also another shopping mall. Unfortunately. It has beautiful old buildings, but it is so crowded and busy.
After dinner, Ken and I went on a walk of the city, following an audio guide and a printed map. Again, I am going to leave most of these photos uncaptioned. Perhaps if I have time later, on a rainy day or something, I'll return to this page and add captions.
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| The courtyard of the medieval building believed to have been Juliet Cappello's house. |
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| Juliet's balcony. |
