The Palio of the Lagoon

The last few days in Orbetello have been spent on the beach while we discussed what we should do next. In the end, we decided to end the bicycle trip early due to lack of bicycle friendly roads and our lack of desire to bicycle along the spine of Italy in order to go further south. It was a hard decision, but easy in the end.
Our options were to either navigate around the busy road, which basically acted as a wall preventing us any easy route south, and instead riding over mountain over mountain the entire way south. That didn't sound too fun.
Another option we discussed was to take a ferry to elba island and explore that area. But, after a week camping on the coast we felt we needed to get off the beach and back into civilization. So our last option, which we decided was the best, was to travel to Vienna and explore Austria for the next ten days until we come back to Florence.
So as we type this, we are back in Florence and waiting for our night train to Vienna.
The last few days in Orbetello were great. We rode into town everyday, which was nice because there was a bike path from the main road near our campsite that continued over the landbridge to the city and then through town, ending at the train station. When we weren't exploring the town we would spend the extra hours on the beach. Then we would need a nap from all the strenuous laying down at the beach. We agree that this is our favorite place so far since we are camping at a decent place with a close walk to the beach. The beach was very nice and the water was beautiful. Also, we liked the short ride into town, which was big enough and yet small enough so that we recognized many of the same people by our third day.
Luck had it, that our second day in town was the third annual palio in the lagoon. This was a contest between 5 teams from the area who raced each other in the lagoon in large boats. Of course the race was preceded by a parade through town , including a renaissance procession!
We promise many pictures for our next post, but for now we are off to the train station.