ok so we have had a little change of heart(and no its not inspired by women, why does everyone think that?).....no sorry dad im not coming home early to work for you instead we have decided.............ill tell you at the end.
ok i noticed i skipped quite a huge part out after rimini which is worth talking about so im gonna go back over it a little as its raining and not nice on our rest day so this is us resting on the internet where they didnt ask us for id and they have music downloaded from limewire on the computers......dodgy me thinks?
unfortunately we seem to leave places on the worst days and our timing isnt that good so our leaving for bologna on a sunday was no better.we had to travel 80 odd miles and it wasnt cool ill tell you that.we set out with me not having had any sleep due to shane from the night before so i wasnt feeling great already, id drunk about 2 litres of a nice mix of both coffee and water to get me going or so i hoped.we got about 2 thirds of the way along when we though we should stop again and call the hostel once more just to make sure that we still had room and that we were going to be a bit later than originally planned due to us leaving at about 11 o clock in the morning(very late for us).that went fine but about 20 seconds down the road suddenly out of nowhere my wheel had taken a turn for the worst again and buckled sideways.....give me strengh.....was one fo the many phrases flowing like the rivers of babylon throuhg my head an out my mouth (more mutley style to be frank) as i didnt have anything to fix it with we have to stop and dismantle my wheel so i could take the mudguard off and disconnect my back brake for the ramaining 30 odd miles into bologna.when we did eventually get there we then had to find the hostel we knew it wasnt in the centre but we had our bikes so it shouldnt have been a problem for us but the we ran into another problem the scale and accurasy of the maps in both of the hostel books that we had were put to the test and both failed miserably.....so after cycling down a country path finding farmer giles and extracting about as much information as a chastiy belt isnt annoying we headed back into town to find some guy on a big bike that shane was naturally attracted to(the motorbike not the bloke) and he said to follow him. i dont know what he was thinkning or how far we had come but shane the quicker of the two of us on the bike was being left for nothing and me struggling with sleep deprivation alcohol intake and a day of cycling on a half dead bike was well far behind and still had to keep going at about 20 miles and hour just to stay withing eye contact of shane!!!!eventually after refinding the petrol head biker he pointed to a road and said go that way so gratefully we did and slowed the pace right down that we might have been going faster if we were riding backwards.....the hostel was ok and we booked in and our ingenious plan started to fall into place.the next morning we took my bike to get fixed and then had to cycle back up to the hostel then get th bus back into the city so we could get the train that day to firenze obviously we would ahve normally cycled it but neither of us felt up to the 120km ride over the alpines again so we got the eurostar through the mountains amuch more pleasureable way of doing it.the hostel was beautiful to put it mildly it was a country villa with a fountain and gardens very very nice.florence as a whole was just nice, people say its beautiful and the most amazing city but we both found it just nice.and annoying the david couldnt be seen as the place that it is in is closed on mondays how stupid is that???the next leg was to get to the train station in the morning quite early so we could get back to bologna and get our bikes we had left at the hostel so we could get to verona.this proved to take a little longer than we had hoped for so we evetually left at about 12oclock.then began the trip to match all trips so far.we ended up cycling a total of 92.83 miles that day to get to verona and along the way we met a rather strange american guy.he resided in a bar in the middle of nowhere (well just outside cento) and had a full beaming american accent to go with his full annoying american pig-headedness.his name was tom and after translating to the bar maid for us he then told us a few anti-english jokes which we both politely congratulated him on and laughed at the right points......i could see shanes blood boiling in his veins already at this point......but then he told us about a bet he had with a taxi-cab owner in england, so we asked him where and he said well its called ACE cabs (ding ding alarm bells start to ring for us it does sound familiar....)and then he said yeah its in cromer!!!!we were like we live right next to cromer thats amazing!!!so next time anyone who is reading this happens to end up in a ACE cab ask if the guy owning it is called richard and has he paid the stupid american in italy over the football match bets.....thankyou.
anyways when we got about 40km from verona we started to look to the sky for some kind of help and inspiration and then realised that the sun was sarting to go down!!!!!eeek so we pedal a bit faster and then the sun just keeps accelerating down towards night time so we start to worry that we are going to be stuck on a major trunck road into verona and be in the dark cycling with no lights so it ended up us pedalling our little backsides off to get there.we hit verona at about half 8 and the street lights had just started to come on needless to say we were both completely shattered and needed some well earned sleep.the hostel was really ok there but they locked all the doors including the dorms at 12 at night every night and you werent allowed out again untill 7 the next morning when the unlocked them..... know its a youth hostel but we arent children we came to get away from constriction and confines is what i heard the wo annoying american guys next to us saying(they were annoying as the first night they sat with their other new found american friends strumming very annoying and untalented tunes on a guitar that i was tempted on more than one occasion to smash over his head or at least hide from him)we stayed the day in verona and its has to be the best city we have stayed in it was just so old and not overpopulated by tourists i mean there was alot of them but you walk down one off street and you seem to loose everyone and just be secluded in a realy feeling italian city with alot of character to it.after watching the football and eating in a restaurant and straight after followed by a kebab......we were hungry ok?....we stayed up and drank a bit with a south african/new zealand girl we had just met that morning and learned a bit about her strange shouting habits in her house and the guys living next door to her who thought the whole house was a bit weird......hello nicole......at least she was nice enough to wake us up in the morning by drawing on me.......not impressed it have to say but i had drawn a huge X on her back the day before so i suppose i deserved it.
moving on from the flatlands we headed to lake garda where we had tried to make it in time to meet shane's nan whilst she was on holiday.luckily for us we did make it in tiem and shane even managed to meet her off her day trip bus whilst going to get some food from the supermarket after we had washed our clothes(see grandma neednt worry about it we are washing them).we had a meal that night with them and then saw them again the next day for a walk and they had also taked their hotel manager into letting us use their pool for a bit......get in.....around lake garda we took a cable kart up to one of the mountains and walked around a bit and i also managed to get sunburnt whilst eating along wth the yodelling being played to us....not looking forward to that.......we met quite alot of other cyclist but when they were telling us about what they were doing they always seemed a bit shocked about what we were doing....it is nice to get one up on people who think they are being extreme......
anyways after shane has nearly killed his leg yesterday getting to trento we had to stay here for a day so he could rest it so sitting here typing is probably best for it i think?well im typing he is looking at the john lewis website..........need i say more.......
but yeah im off now
ttfn
x
