Day 45 Perugia - 12.9.05 

Getting out of Perugia required more concentration than we were accustomed to. The lady at the tourist office drew a line on the city map and when I asked in my improving Italian, if it was OK for "biccletta" she said it was fine, just a short tunnel. When we entered this tunnel we found that half way into this dark tunnel, there were 3 branches a single lane wide. Ours was the middle one. With that level of traffic I thought "no way" and we stayed right and got the hell out of there. Even with our 5 tail lights each, those cars fly around there and take no prisoners.

  

Once out it was easy to make our way across to the right road and get out of town. The road ahead was flat with a relatively good surface. Our friend the head wind was milder today so the 42Km to Citta della Pieve went smoothly till 5km out when a cold rain hit. At about that time 2 riders joined us and we agreed to have coffee together in town. Heike and Marcus were from Germany and were doing day rides from a central point so had little luggage. We had a tasty lunch, the rain stopped and we were on our way. The next stages had climbs but we took it easy and enjoyed the sights.

Ficulle was interesting and supplied Ice Cream No 2 for the day. At the base of Orvieto we had Ice Cream No 3 and liked the place so much, we checked into a hotel, left our luggage in the room and did the climb to the old city - light! The Dumo, built in 1290 and the old city impressed us and we met another German couple and compared travel adventures with Annette and Manfred. Our first Kebab in Italy was a real winner but the local red should have been a marinade.

Stats Dist 97 Km, Average 17km/hr, Max 47km/hr, Climb 1030m 

  Email John at John@CycleOdyssey.com.au
 

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