the longest mile, the bluest lake

Yesterday we left our hotel at 5:30 in the morning to get out of the city before it was busy. It was truly a labyrinth because the smaller streeets that we wanted to stay on only lasted 4 or 5 blocks. It took over 2 hours, but we made it out of the city and watched the sunrise on the way.

the smaller towns outside of milan took us on an adventure, we were once riding through a saturday market being set up with more than two cheese stands, and one time a bike path led us to ikea and left us lost in the parking lot! avery nice man from a hardware store talked to us and helped us navigate out.

further up north we started climbing the mountains that were only a distant view earlier in the day. this is were we started seeing TONs of bikers, all dressed up in fancy jerseys and on nice bikes. we think some of them may have been on teams because they all matched.

we followed most of them up hills and more hills until we were the only ones climbing the steepest hill i have ever seen. for 1 mile is was straight up, they didnàt even give us switch backs, just slight turns in the road where we were given hope that the road might flatten out. it didnt. until we got to the top where there was a good view, but no church. we wound down the other side of the mountain, but still no church. we were not happy and very exhausted because by now it was 4 pm and we didnt know where we were camping that night. luckily i remembered there was a camping ground in a town downhill from where we were, and good thing dino talked me into getting back on my bike. we had to go downhill for so long that our hands ached, we made it to the camp ground and were given the last camping spot! we fell asleep around 5:30 and stayed asleep most of the night.

Today was a whole new day and we were surprisingly feeling much better. we left the little town of onno when the camp ground office opened (we only had to pay 13 euros)! and we were much happier with the scenery today. chuckanut has a rival and i think the road along lake como wins hands down. there were hundreds of cyclists today and the road didnt even have a line going down the middle. cliffs on one side and the lake on the other. twice we had to go through tunnels and one of them was 2200 meters long!! best of all, it was flat.

we are now in bergamo, taking our time to lake iseo. we had gelato just before coming here and before that we had an afternoon apertivo that was really appreciated. we were nearly starving before we found the only restraunt that was open. on sondays everything in italy is closed.

everything.

and although we only had some olives, chips and wine it was enough to fuel us to a gelateria.

overall, i think we are doing really good despite having the hardest day of our lives yesterday. today seemed much easier even though we are covering about the same amount of ground, only this time we are descending from the italian alps instead of climbing them. if anything, yesterday was a good test of our physical limits. the alpuian towns were beautiful and the people were very intersting. during the most challenging part of yesterday there was a herd of cows with bells around their necks watching us push our bikes up the mountain. it seemed like they were playing music or us because we were taking so long climbing. we would literally have stop about every 100 feet and rest for 10 minutes it was so steep. our gps said that we had reached over 2800 feet in altitude. when we got to the top the view was amazing and we realized that we were at the same height as the mountains we were fearing. the view down below to the blue lake como was awesome even though we were so exhausted.