Our next appointment in our “schedule” was with Giacomo, a friend from Genova we met few weeks earlier in Outlook festival. We wanted to be there for the week end, to have some proper time together, which meant that we had two days to cross the Apeninos, small mountains between Piacenza and the Ligurian coast. The ride was a fabulous one, through small old villages and vineyards.

Sunset color makes it magic

We cycled until sunset and stopped in the only town in the area, Varzi, for food and accomodation. We tried the same technique as the day before, but even with the help of the locals, we couldnt get a bed…you cannot always be lucky. With our new friends, we even tried to wake up the monk to see if we could sleep in the church, ut apparently, he was in his deep sleep. We then decided to go camping somewhere, even if it was getting cold. Few hundreds of meters after having left our guys, the cops stopped us on the road and asked our passports. 2 guys cycling at night lost in the mountains apparently looks suspicious. After a good 15 minutes of check with the central office, they gave us our passport back, and told us : ‘You’re travelling a lot, aren’t you?’. ‘Yes, we are indeed!’. They let us go without even asking where we would sleep that night, so we kept cycling in the hills, where we found an abandoned farm to set our tent. In the morning, the old people living there were amused by those 2 guys with the bikes, and offered us coffee and biscuits, instead of moaning that we slept on a private property.

This was a nice camping spot

Our friendly morning neighbours

Wherever we are, we always find great people in the countryside. Day 2 in the mountains was as scenic as the first one, and gave us pretty long downhills -around 30 km in total-, and incredible landscape, as we could see the sea from far, far away…and next to it, huge snowy mountains.

It might be the “Mont Blanc”

At some point, We were about to turn left, following our dear Google Maps GPS, when we stopped to ask a local if it was the right way to Genova. He told us we had to be crazy to go that way, as it goes up and down on unridable little mountain paths, while the road on the right was certainly longer, but much faster. We listened to him and didn’t regret to do so, as we cycled 30 km downhill on a nice road, under the sun. Many kilometers later, in the late afternoon, we got close to Genova.

Tags: Cycling Further, Cycling Italy

Sylwia was working in the morning, while we were sleeping like babies in her flat. We slowly woke up and decided we would cook for her when she would come back from work, at lunchtime. We got some pesto and pastas, then started cooking. She arrived, and put her pinch of polish salt into the meal. Pesto cooked together by belgians and polish was a great success, and gave us the energy we’d need to start cycling…around 3PM.

What a beautiful ceiling

It was cloudy and the forecast was talking about rain, a word that left our vocabulary 3 months earlier. We just rode few kilometers when the first drops hit our faces, but we kept on riding even if the rain was getting stronger. ‘Ok, let’s put our K-ways, it should be somewhere buried into my bag’. But then it became stormy and we got soaked, like in the good old times in Romania. We stopped just 30km further, in Piacenza, as we wanted to dry, and get warmer. It was also already late, so we’d have to think -again- about accomodation, as we didn’t want to camp in the rain. We thought we would be as lucky as the day before, then started asking people around, and sending couchsurfing requests. It didn’t work, and we seriously thought about going back to Sylwia’s flat in Cremona. She was concerned about us having a roof for the night, and totally up for us to come back. Unfortunately, no train nor buses could handle our bikes, and coming back cycling in the rain was out of question. We gave up and found the address of the cheapest hotel in town, around 50 euros for a double room. We stopped in a cheap chinese restaurant for food and roof, and that’s where the magic started to happen. On the table next to us, a group of moldavians, ukrainians and romanians was eating, drinking and talking, mostly in russian. We left the table around the same time, and started talking with our basics of Russian.

Mika, Sergei, Dani and Niko

It felt good to practice the language that followed us through most of the trip, with people from countries we all crossed. They were bluffed with us talking about small villages they knew about, and say a few words of each of their languages. ‘Davaï piva!’ one said, and we all went to the sinister bar in front of the restaurant, for a round of beer together. Prostitutes had meetings with their clients in the bar, and we saw few weird people around…but anyway, we were all excited by this unexpected meeting, and stayed there for a while, always an eye on the bike to make sure they wouldn’t get stolen. The drunkest of the group -the romanian one- was living closeby and offered us to stay at his place, nearby. We went with the guys to his place on the bicycle, but, arrived there, he couldn’t walk, nor talk, and hosting us was not possible anymore. We stayed with the others, who were very sorry about what happened, and wanted to lead us to the hotel, and go for another beer. It stopped raining, and we were in a good mood, so we went for a last beer next to the last bar opened in the city. After an hour or so of advanced russian chatting, we thought we’d go somewhere and camp in the fields, as the sky was clear, and it didn’t feel like raining for good few hours. After goodbye hugs with our best friend of the night, we cycled for about 15 meters, when we heard people speaking french. ‘Some Frenchies’ I said, loudly. ‘Yes, we are! What you doing here?’. ‘We’re cycling, coming back from China!’. ‘Really? Where are you sleeping tonight?’. ‘We don’t know…we’re about to go camping somewhere in the fields’. ‘You kidding? Ok, you two come to our place, we have a flat in the center!’. ‘Wouhou! Sure, let’s go!’. We got the address, and met the students in their flat, had some talk, and gave one of our remaining Kyrgyz cap to one of them, who had a cap collection. He got terribly happy. Then we went to bed.

3 am accomodation with Nilse

She always keeps an eye on us

Tags: Cycling Further, Cycling Italy

After a first  meeting with Italy that did not meet all of our expectations, we cycled down south, and left the touristic area of Lago di Garda, happy to stop seeing campings, Macdonalds and aquaparks everywhere. The road became more interesting in the south, as we cycled by several fruit exploitations, smelling peaches, apples, melons and kiwis -that were not mature enough yet, damn!-. Grabbing the fruits and spending some time with the farmers were the enjoyable breaks we were looking after during the hot afternoon.

Loving those peaches

We reached the little town of Cremona around 6, and had a break there in the lovely city center : car free, full of cyclists and old, beautiful  stones. Later in the evening, we would learn that it is the hometown of Stradivarius, now full of students learning how to craft violins, which gives the city some artistic and relaxed vibes. Our mission for the evening was to find a screen displaying our soccer game, Belgium VS Croatia (special game for Yves, who belongs to both countries). We knew we wouldn’t make it to any other town afterwards, so we started looking for sports pub in Cremona. As both teams were not interesting enough by italian standards, we couldn’t find one, but we still managed to get a wifi network in a bar, and stream the game from our little computer. It was a draw, not too exciting.

Cremona here we are!

Having a beer, watching a game

After the game and a few pints of local beer, we had to find a place to sleep, and didn’t want to pay for an hotel. Western prices for ho(s)tel are just ridiculous, we thought. We had sent a few requests via Couchsurfing but didnt get any answer, so we decided to cycle to some fields outside the city to set the tent. We arrived somewhere quiet and dark, but Nico didn’t feel like sleeping outside yet, and was determined to find a place by asking people if we could sleep at their place. With a bit of diplomacy, everything is possible 🙂
We then head back to the same place, and chatted some people on the terrace, approaching them asking if they knew a place to sleep for free, hoping they would invite us at their home. It didn’t work that well, but we ended up talking with two friendly students on the terrace. They couldn’t host us, but advised us a good camping spot in a park. We were about to leave when I received a call, past midnight. It was Sylwia, a polish couchsurfer living there, offering us to stay at her place right in the city center. Her flat was in a beautiful, very old building, and she was extremely friendly. Bingo!

Tags: Cycling Further, Cycling Italy

After a enjoyable stay in Motovun, we had to continue our way towards the west, even if we didn’t really feel like going back to our world so soon. From Motovun, we cycled to Slovenia, then Italy, on the same day. In Slovenia, we had the pleasure to meet cycling paths again, a luxury that does not exist in many countries, and we entered Italy through one of them -without going through customs!-.

Crossing the border on a cycling path 😉

The first big city we would cross in the west was Trieste, an industrial town in the north of Italy. Our first impressions were weird : homeless people in the streets, busy teenagers checking their smartphones, messy graffitis on the walls, busy traffic, expensive coffees, and many people who did not seem too happy to live. Anyway, we didn’t stay long in Trieste, as we had a meeting with our old friend Brieuc, travelling in a camper with his girlfriend Georgia. After a night in a touristic, tasteless camping together with the couple and a polish cyclist we caught on the road, we put our bikes in the camper and went for a 200 km ride west, and we got back on our bikes in the beautiful area of Verona.

With our friends Brieuc and Giorgia

Verona

Wedding diner on the Romeo and Juliet square

We decided to cycle until Lago di Garda and camp there, unaware of what was Lago di Garda about. Arrived on the coast, it was full of campings, and full of germans…we didn’t find the wild beaches we were looking after. Every square meter of beach belongs to someone, and it is forbidden to stay on the beach after midnight. The security guards told us wild camping wasn’t an option there, and that we’d have to find a spot in an official camping site, which we did. At least, we got electricity plugs, and neighbours interested in our story. Last but not least, we had the privilege to go to the aquagym lesson in the morning. What a wonderful world!

Lago di garda

Aquagym in the morning makes you ride until the evening!

Tags: Cycling Further, Cycling Italy