Milano

The final chapter of our trip brought us to Milano. Verbania is situated an easy hour train ride north of Milano, so the logical point of arrival/departure is Milano Malpensa Airport (MXP). Since our flight out was at 10:30am, getting from Verbania to Milano and out to the airport by 8:30, would have been near impossible, or immensely unpleasurable at the very least. We decided to spend a day in Milano (two nights) in order to make the trip to the airport easier and also to see some of the city. 

Milano is a really nice city. It’s perhaps not as scenic in some ways as Roma, but I like it a lot better. If you do nothing else in Milano, you can always spend the time shopping. The city is like one giant mall. I personally prefer shopping at the smaller shops in a place like Firenze but Milano has plenty to offer. It’s also a flat city so it’s very easy to traverse by foot. In addition, the subway and trolley system is outstaning and easy to navigate. Milano now also has at least three bike share options as well which adds to the fun of getting around. 

Our visit to Milano started with the longest short walk ever. With the bike bags, short walks can seem long, but in this case we actually made the 500m walk very long. We arrived in Milano at 11am and were not able to check into our apartment until 2pm. There was a thought of checking our bags at a baggage storage facility and spending that time seeing something, but the only place that could accommodate our giant bike bags was out of the way and somewhat costly. By the time we got the bags there and retrieved them to walk to the apartment, it wouldn’t have been much time to do anything, so we just walked that 500m from the station to the apartment with lots of breaks. 

It was actually quite fine, and although a bit of a waste of time, it turned out to be a nice chance to people watch. The highlight was an old Italian woman who was walking her dog. She needed to know what we were doing with these giant bags standing around. She spoke no English but we managed to talk to her for quite some time. You would have thought she was my grandmother. Italians know no boundaries. Of course when she came back towards home, we were still there. We talked some more, we learned a bit about her, she learned about us, we got to practice some Italian, and it was a really nice experience with a real Italian person who lives in the neighborhood we were staying in. That’s what I want out of these trips. 

Once we checked in and made a quick stop at the grocery store around the corner for water, we were off, on the subway to downtown to go to the Duomo. The Duomo is the largest church in Milano and is one of the most ornate and spectacular basilicas I’ve ever seen. I’ve been there a few times, but it was Kristen’s first time seeing it, so we were sure to get tickets to go inside and up to the terraces and roof. Besides that we stopped at Princi Bakery for some pre-dinner snack of focaccia and the most incredible chocolate tart I’ve ever had in my life. From there we walked and did a little bit of shopping until finally heading back to the station area for dinner. 

On our second day in Milano, we walked more than I think I’ve ever walked before. After taking bikeshare bikes to the subway and taking the subway to the center, we didn’t get off our feet until much later that evening, even having to stand at the extremely busy Princi Bakery for lunch. We visited Castello Sforzesco which besides being an old fortress style castle, is now an incredible museum. The part that most interested us was the musical instrument museum that houses a seemingly endless collection of antique instruments, mostly of Italian origin. 

Probably the highlight of Milano was our visit to Bianchi Café and Cycles. As many of you may know, both Kristen and I ride Bianchi bicycles. Bianchi is the oldest still existing bicycle brand in the world. A few years ago, Bianchi opened a café-restaurant and concept shop in central Milano. The café and restaurant must be quite good as there were lots of non-cyclists in there while the bike shop was not particularly busy. Nothing there was exorbitantly expensive either which was really nice. The whole place was decked out in Celeste, Bianchi’s signiture color and it was thrill to be there. We spent some time down in the shop and talked with the guy running it that day. There were some very good deals to be had there on team bikes but ultimately we couldn’t bring back any more bikes to the US. I bought a t-shirt,Kristen had an espresso at the bar, and we went along our way.  

We also stopped in La Scala, Milano’s famous opera house for a tour of the museum and a quick peak into the theater itself where rehearsal for opening night was going on. We stopped at GROM for our final gelato of the trip before heading back to the apartment by subway. 

After taking a quick break, refilling on water, and using the bathroom, we headed back out towards Corso Buenos Aires, which is one of the longest shopping streets in the world. While the center of Milano based around the famous Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, features super high-end designer stores, Buenos Aires has many of the mass-market shops that I can afford. I was on a quest for a pair of European-style sneakers, but it seems like Italy is on this trend of white Adidas Stan Smith’s right now and I ultimately ended up coming home without any shoes. In fact, the only thing I came home with was a T-shirt from the Bianchi Store. It was a low budget trip and we stayed right on budget. Low budget definitely doesn’t mean unenjoyable. While I love shopping, this still was one of my favorite trips I’ve make to Italy... yet. Hopefully many more to come.

And that was that. After an early alarm to get to the station by 7:00 we were on a plane home to New Jersey. The flight was quick and easy despite a rocky descent, and even customs getting back into the US was unusually fast and easy. All in all, I’d say it was an excellent trip. I can’t say I’m glad to be back. I’d much rather be there. I always experience a culture shock when I come back to America. For so many reasons, Kristen and I really belong in Italy. Our current political climate aside, I still feel like a foreigner in this country and I’ll be very glad the day I can finally expatriate. 

Going forward, I am going to try to write more on this blog. For the cyclists reading, I’ll write about notable rides or events as well as product reviews. For everyone else, maybe I can write a bit about food or something similar. For now, I’m signing off for a little bit. Ultimately my goal will be to collect the best photos from the trip and write up a more consise piece that I hope can get publish in cycling media somewhere. I’ll keep you all updated.

Also if you would like any advice about traveling to Italy, or traveling with your bike, etc please do not hessitate to contact me at dscifell@gmail.com

Thanks so much for reading! 

Final Days of Cycling

Towards the end of the trip, I got a bit too busy with cycling, cooking our remaining food to avoid wasting anything, laundry, and making the most of our few remaining days in Verbania to have enough time or energy at the end of the night to write on this blog. 

After our giant ride on Friday, and the rainy rest day on Saturday, we were left with two days to ride before packing up and heading off for some time in Milano before flying home. After that giant ride, every other ride seemed short and inconsequential by comparison. 

Part 1: Mottarone Reverse

On Sunday, we knew our goal was to do at least 50 miles to make a 300 mile week. We decided to head out through Gravellona Toce and Omegna and do Mottarone in reverse. With the rain blew in slightly cooler weather, and as we departed for our ride even from the slight elevation of our street Via Monache, we could see that the rain was snow up in the high mountain peaks. Luckily where we were going it was not, but certainly the peaks above Cheggio, which we rode to only three days prior, would have been snow capped. 

The ride through Omegna wasn’t anything special. Omegna is a larger town with quite a bit of industrial area. It’s right off the major train lines and autostrada so it’s ideally situated for industry. We chose a more direct path since I didn’t have a route programmed on my Garmin, which while perhaps less scenic, ensured that we wouldn’t get lost in the maze of roads that is Omegna. 

Once we cleared Omegna, we were on a nice quiet road along Lago d’Orta. From there we made our way though a series of little towns, finally deciding on one to use as our launching point for the climb up Mottarone. There is one road up the south side of Mottarone, but to get to it, it seems there are endless options. I have no clue how we got there, after weaving through several little towns overlooking the smaller lake, we finally got onto the main road. 

The climb up the back side is interesting. The road is wider, two lanes, but because it’s not a private toll road, like the Borromean road on the northeast side, there is more vehicular traffic. The beginning of the climb is quite steep, lots of 14-15% sustained sections, but once you get beyond that, it flattens out and is really enjoyable. I still prefer to do it in the opposite way because the quieter climb and wider descent are more enjoyable, but no less it was still a good ride. 

As I said, it felt a bit anti-climactic after our giant ride on Friday, and although this ride featured over 4000ft of climbing in 50 miles, the Mottarone felt really easy. The ride felt short and while it was really chilly even while wearing our vest on the descent, it was a nice enough ride. We got back to Verbania with time to eat lunch, gather our things and do laundry for the last time. 

Part Two: Final Ride

For our final ride, we planned to do something short in order to ensure that we had time to get back, pack the bikes, and spend some time walking to Intra to visit a few shops. On paper, the ride was easy enough. Just under 30 miles with 3600ft of climbing might sound hard, but after everything we’d done, it didn’t seem too overwhelming. The ride covered most of the vertical feet in the first 12 miles, as we climbed, gradually at first, from the moment we went out the door. 

Heading out toward Ponte Nivia again but this time not turning up towards Intragna, we heading towards Aurano and Piancavallo, which we had visited on our first real ride of the trip. It was a nice way to bookend things, but I grossly underestimated the climb. I seem to underestimate the climbs in that area. They are all quite steep. I hit out pushing the pace to Aurano and then chilled from there. Unfortunately it was just past Aurano that the climb got steep. After many kilometers of steep grade, much over 13%, we reached the top and were treated with some incredible views of the snow-capped peaks on the Swiss-Italian border to the northwest and Lago Maggiore spread out to the east. We stopped for a while, took some pictures, and that it was a chilly but roaring descent back into Intra. 

Once you get past Pian di Sole, where there is a slight climb, the descent is one of the most fun around. The road is mostly wide, the turns sweeping, and there are some really fast straight sections to get up to maximum speed. Despite our windcapes flapping in the breeze, we roared back down to Intra in no time. By that point, we were hungry, went back to the apartment for lunch, showered, and went about the day. 

The remaining part of the day consisted of packing and a ton of walking. The walking we did that day was only to be outdone by the immense amount of walking we did in Milano, but still it was very considerable. We first visited Ciclomania Barale’s Verbania location, which was really cool. Lots of great bikes and cool inventory, and not as messy nor crazy as what is likely the original location in Domodossola. 

We walked into Intra from there, visited a few shops but didn’t buy anything, and eventually found our way back to Pallanza. It was a good day and a nice way to sum up our time spent in Verbania.

It really makes me sad to leave a place like that, especially after spending so much time there. I feel like after two weeks in that apartment, it really started to feel like home. You start to know the neighbors names, mostly from them yelling at their children, and everything starts to click. From the way you prepare meals, understanding the trash/recycling system, to knowing your way around the maze of old street, we started to feel at home in Verbania. It’s perhaps the perfect place for me. There is tons of great food, the culture is wonderful, the values about recycling and sustainability are in line with mine, plus it’s the perfect balance of medium size town versus being in a big city or out in the middle of nowhere. It’s a nice place to live. Oh, and the cycling is outstanding! I’ve visited a lot of places in Italy and I love them all, but a town like Verbania really speaks to me. I am sure there are tons like it all over Italy, but from what I experienced, I’ve felt that Verbania strikes that perfect balance. I think somewhere in the south of Italy might be more favorable in the winter, and I do love the south and the culture and food there, but from a practical standpoint, Verbania might be perfect. 

Photo Update

Today has turned out to be a great day to update the blog and post photos. We went out this morning to the grocery stores, returned for lunch, and soon after the sky opened up! It’s currently raining here. It was pouring harder than I’ve ever heard before and hailing as well. Luckily we didn’t go out for a ride. Our intention for today was to do laundry as well, but unless it dries up out there, we won’t be doing that. 

As promised, here are lots of photos and captions from the past three days. 

Isola Madre is home to the original 16th century villa and botanical gardens. Here is a view of some flowers with Verbania Pallanza as the backdrop about one mile away.

The whole island is immaculately groomed. Here is a view of a staircase up to the villa from besides the chapel. Today this area also includes some more modern buildings that house a snack bar, book store, and bathrooms. 

Geckos are everywhere here. They’re very hard to photograph since they are small and very fast.

A view from Isola Bella across to Isola Madre and Pallanza. 

The landscaping on Isola Madre must take a lot of people a lot of effort, as it has for nearly 500 years.

Just look at all of those vine flowers growing up the side of the villa. 

The palace at Isola Bella housed a music room which featured a few harpsichords. This one was the most well displayed, likely the most ornate. 

The mosaic tile of the floors in many of the rooms is unbelievable. It is very hard to capture especially with people and furniture in the room, but the scale and detail of these designs all made up of tiny cm2 tiles is incredible. 

Isola Bella also has amazing gardens, but the main feature is this landscaping with the sculptures. The best way to get a good photo of it is to get a post card. Then there will be no people in it. Otherwise, it’s a very popular tourist destination. 

We ate a wonderful meal at Osteria del Castello. The kitchen is upstairs with a dumbwaiter to transport everything to the wait starff.

Green Eggs and Ham

One of the most beautiful views all trip. I love the view from the top of the mountains, but this valley view is equally as incredible. 

The cow has just given birth to her calf moments before we arrived. 

The view from the dam at Alpe Cheggio. 

The color of the water at the mountain lake at Alpe Cheggio was unreal.

Cows chilling out in Cheggio/

The flies didn’t seem to phase this young cow. 

A calf feeding from his mother. 

A well earned plate of Risotto Funghi Porcini, and we didn’t even have to go out. 

Italians, and in this case Swiss, do love their signs. There are signs for everything, but especially hiking trails. Everywhere we’ve ridden here has tons of hiking trails. This must be one of the best places in the world to hike. It think you could hike for weeks, only visiting small towns and mountain shelters to take refuge and get supplies.

Recycling is very important to Italians and Swiss. This sign was at the top of the Alpe di Neggia in the middle of nowhere. They are trying to stress the importance of not littering on the trails. 

On the steepest slopes of the north side of Alpe di Neggia. 12% grade for a long time. 

Kristen arriving at the top of the Alpe di Neggia from the north side. Incredible and dramatic view of Locarno, Swizterland  with a backdrop of the Swiss Alps. 

Here are the goats we ran into once we re-entered Italy. You can see how many of them are just chilling out in the road. Further up the road where most of the 20 or so goats were situated, a many was try to get them out of the road so he could get to his parked car. These goats became our friends for while.

This was the first goat to approach us. She led the other goats to us but quickly lost interest in favor of eating some brush and then relieving herself in the road. 

Once these goats realized how salty Kristen’s bike and cycling shorts were for all the sweating and drying they wouldn’t stop licking her and her bike. It was adorable.

And it tickled. 

These goats were so friendly and so cute!

We could have stayed there all day with them but they probably would have eaten our clothes and our bikes and we would have been left to wander the mountains of Lombardia like naked gypsys. 

So much cycling... so little energy to write.

The past two days have been a whirlwind of great cycling. Yesterday after riding almost 80 miles and cooking dinner, I had no energy left to do much more than sit by the lake and watch the lightening of storms beyond Mottarone. Tonight, after an incredibly epic ride, I’m pretty much in the same place. Alas, I’ll write because if I don’t, I’m going to get off track with keeping up this blog. 

Part 1: Alpe Cheggio

Let’s begin with yesterday’s ride. Like I said, just under 80 miles. The destination was Alpe Cheggio, which is a mountain just south of Domodossola, west of Villadossola. The ride there was wonderful once we got beyond Gravelona Toce. On flat roads with a tailwind, we sailed through many valley villages, first of which was Ornovaso, the hometown of Elisa Longo Borghini. She has been around training and we were hoping one of these days we’d run into her. We’ve come close. The flat road through shared a path with the autostrada but in was mostly quiet and stunningly beautiful to ride through corn fields set between giant mountains. All the towns were neat too. Beautiful churches, farms, everything you’d expect from an Italian town. 

Along the way, we stopped to see a cow who had clearly just given birth to a calf. The calf was not yet up but the mother was licking it and I’m sure not too long after the calf got on it’s hooves. We checked back on the way home but the farmer must have brought them into the barn. We continued on from there into Villadossola, which is where we turned up and onto the climb. The climb at first was very mild, much like the climb we did on Tuesday. Very long, but very gradual. And gradually the gradient increased. Once we reached the quaint mountain town of Antronapiana the climb to Cheggio really began. It wasn’t terribly difficult, but there were no shortage of switchbacks, one after the other for quite some time. 

When we reached Cheggio we were treated to incredible views of the high Alps, a quiet village, many cows, and a large Alpine lake being held back by a giant dam. We rode out onto the dam, admired the remarkable turquoise water, and had a snack. Before we began the descent, I was able to take some photos of the dam, the view, and the cows. There were many young cows, some calves. What a place to be a cow!

The descent took us quickly back to Antronapiana where we paused when we heard the church organ resounding through the ancient streets. It was immediately clear that it was just the organist practicing on a Thursday afternoon. We stuck our heads in to listen for just a few moments and then carried on our way. The final part of the descent was really fun. There were some long straightaways of very safe wide road which while only declined at about -5%, was awesome to rip down. 

The return trip brought us onto the other side of the river, and while we faced an ugly headwind, we were back to Mergozzo in little enough time. The ride from Mergozzo to Verbania, especially after Fondotoce, is always a drag race. It’s just a fast piece of road, especially at “rush hour”. Even with all those miles in the legs, it’s hard not to ride it fast. All in all, it was a great ride with a perfect mix of climbing, descending, and fast flat roads. 

Part 2: Alpe di Neggia

Anyone who knows me knows that I generally despise doing “out-and-back” rides, wherein you go the same roads out and back. There is a local ride back home which does this and I think it’s incredibly stupid given how many great roads we have. 

Here, there are tons of great roads too. On my last trip in an effort to avoid out-and-back rides, I avoided everything that couldn’t be part of a loop. That means I never did the rides to Cicogna, ValGrande, or Alpe Cheggio. I’ve come to realize that these are amazing rides and there are tons of them that you can do here. 

That said, today’s ride could have easily been some sort of loop, at least for the most part. However, I really wanted to do the Alpe di Neggia pass into Switzerland but I couldn’t decide which side to do and didn’t want to ride on the lake for too long. Kristen said last night after yesterday’s ride, which was hard but not insane, that we really needed to do something epic. Challenge accepted!

There is a lot of epic riding that can be done here. I put together a 100mi ride with 20,000ft of climbing. That is just too epic! That would be close to the stats for one of the hardest Tour de France stages ever. What we settled on was a mostly out and back to Alpe di Neggia, which included climbing it from the south side including the Focara Pass, descending the north side into Switzerland and basically tuning right back around up going back up. Granted this is not like going over the Sourland Mountain on Lindberg and coming back again the opposite way. The Alpe di Neggia pass peaks at 4800ft above sea level. The north side alone is 12.5km at 9.5% average grade. And this is after we climbed it already from the other side. We decided we had to do it. 

The ride started by cruising to Intra to take the ferry across to the other size of lake to the town Laveno, and then riding about 14 miles up the lakeside road, though many tunnels, to Maccagno where the ascent began. As I mentioned we climbed the south side with the addition of the Focara Pass which brought up higher up on the mountain to see some sweeping views of Lago Maggiore. The was a short descent after climbing some steep grades to get back to the main road SP5, which crossed in Switzerland climbing up to the 4800ft Alpe di Neggia. When we reached the top many kilometers later, we were treated to an unforgettable view of Locarno, Switzerland to the north, and the part of Lago Maggiore from where we came to the south. 

The descent was a bit of reconnaissance since we knew that in short time we’d be climbing back up the thing. It was immediately apparent how steep of a climb it would be once we started down. After a luckily uneventful descent we were back on the lake to a bench for a snack before heading back up. The north side of the pass is absolutely the harder way and when we hit the bottom we had already racked up 5500ft of climbing for the day. The climb is consistently steep, but it never get above 12%. That said there were who kilometers where it didn’t drop below 11%. It was testing, but finally after over and hour of climbing, we heard the cowbells of more mountain cows and saw the hotel that sits atop the pass. 

There wasn’t much delay. Our of water and with no Swiss Francs to buy anything, we beelined it down the other side to get back into Italy and find a little town with a store that accepted Euros. At the border there is nothing that resembles customs or a border, all of a sudden the road is labeled SP5 and you start to see Italian flags on houses instead of Swiss ones.

Just as we crossed into Italy, however, we were stopped dead in our tracks but a pack of at least 20 mountain goats. The were taking up the entire road, some of them just laying down like they were in a pasture. Unsure as to how to proceed, we stopped, which is when several curious goats approached us. We were quick to make friends. First one came over then three. I was trying to get out my phone to take some photos when all of a sudden the goats were sticking their heads between my handle bars. I tried to explain to them that I had nothing for them to eat, but it was clear they didn’t care about that, they were just happy to see us. Given how much climbing and then descending we did, how much sweating then drying, and our bikes were very salty. The goats like that! They started at first licking parts of the bike and then two of them decided the best source of salt was Kristen’s legs and shorts. We must have been there five minutes before they finally content to move on. We probably could have hung out with them all day if we didn’t have anywhere to go. They were so friendly. As it so happens, one of my students raises goats. He is showing a goat at the Hunterdon 4-H Fair this week. He told me that goats love to be petted between their horns because it’s the one stop they can’t get to. He was right. These mountain goats were thrilled to get rubbed on the head. It’s so surprising because even the sheep at Kristen’s family’s farm are quite flighty, despite being around people. These goats were more friendly than any animal I’ve ever seen. You have to be careful of any animal like this, especially ones with such big horns, but these goats were our best friends. It was wild! Definitely a highlight of the ride!

From there, we found our little store with some water, made our way back down to Maccagno and then it was a crazy “rush hour” ride though Luino back to Laveno. On the final push into town, the Garmin clicked over 10,000ft of climbing, more than I’ve ever done before, and likely more than I’ll do for some time. We arrived in Laveno road a cool down around the block, grabbed some well deserved granita, and were back on the ferry to Intra, with a short easy ride back to our apartment. 

It was absolutely an epic day. 75 miles with just over 10k feet of climbing. It’ll be a day to remember, that’s for sure, and Kristen and I, while tired, are absolutely thrilled that we did it. That’s is why we came here after all. We have three more days of riding, though tomorrow will certainly be a real recovery day, with a trip to both the grocery store and the laundromat. After that we’ll see how the legs feel for Sunday. 

I know that this is a ton of writing to read and no photos. We have lots of photos and still owe photos from Wednesday, but right now it’s 12:30 and I need to go to sleep. Please check back sometime tomorrow. I’ll have photos up with captions from all three days. 

Isole Borromee

Today we forewent our usual cycling in favor a rest day and some tourist activities. On this trip we’ll do very few tourist activities. I think I used to like touristy stuff well enough but now I’ve been to Italy enough that I’d rather just hang out, ride, and eat. However, the Borromean Islands in Lago Maggiore are quite a sight to be seen. The trip to them on the ferry is quick yet enjoyable. It’s nice to see the mountains from the lake, as opposed to the lake from the mountains, which is what we get cycling.

It was a sunny and warm Italian day, perfect to spend visiting botanical gardens and villas. Our first stop was Isola Madre, which is the main island featuring the gardens and original villa dating from the mid-1500s. It’s a beautiful atmosphere filled with aromatic flowers, plants and trees from around the world, and many peacocks. The villa is expansive and well set at the top of the hill that makes up the island. Touring around it you get a glimpse into what it must have been like throughout the past 500 years living at this estate. The Borromeo family was beyond wealthy and well connected. They were tied in with other powerful families like the infamous Medici as well as the papacy and Catholic Church. The villa on Isole Madre was only one of many estates owned by the family. 

The second is the palace on Isole Bella, respendant with it’s sulptures and well manicured gardens. This palace, built in the early-1800s is more grand than the villa on Isola Madre. The palace sits at the south end of the island, and it’s gardens expand all the way to the northern end. It’s beauty is beyond words. Of course there were more peacocks as well. The peacocks are very used to people and will get really close. I even saw someone feeding one from his hand. They are regal birds and it’s amazing to see them up close, but it’s interesting to note that despite their grace they still walk bobbing their head like a common farm chicken or city pigeon. 

Both estates feature different style architecture of course, but both are equally incredible. Again, another one of those days when we could taken thousands of pictures. One of the main things that is apparent about the Borromeo family is how much they loved putting on marionette shows. A half dozen rooms between the two estates featured giant and extremely elaborate sets, musical instruments, playbills, music, and of course the string puppets themselves. It’s quite remarkable. Between the buildings and grounds, the furniture and art, etc it is a great window into the attention to detail people put into things when they took the time to worry about such things. You look at some of the carving on the furniture or think about how much work it would be to build these structure on normal land, no less an island, and you realize that we’ve gotten impatient and satisfied with simplicity a little too much now. People must have had a lot more focus and determination back then. Probably less distractions too. 

Besides the somewhat expensive visit to these islands (you have to pay for the boat ride and pay for entrance into the villas), we spent the rest of the day after a very late lunch walking to and around Intra. We stopped in a few shops, best of which was a Do It Yourself store, which was basically a hardware store, kitchen store, garden store, craft store, and more all put into one. We stumbled across it on this back alley in a modern part of town that no tourist would ever find. We barely found it ourselves. I left with a metric tape measure that has no inches to be found on it. I’m excited about that. There was tons of stuff in there I could buy and after a day spent around overpriced tourist BS that you can find anyhwere in Italy, I was thrilled to find a real Italian store where no tourists probably ever go. 

We wandered around some more and eventually ended up in the main part of Verbania, which you probably know by now is called Intra. Here can be found many shops, all of which were starting to close up for the day. We stopped in a few, but nothing peaked our interests. Intra has a lot more shops and restaurants, so we decided why not stop in somewhere for dinner tonight. After a long sit on a bench in Piazza Ranzoni I started looking at the Michelin guide website and found a place a few meters away that was given a Michelin plate, which unlike the stars which are reserved for high end cuisine, the plate is awarded for restaurants that have really good food but are more typical. 

This particular place, called Osteria del Castello was situated in the quiet Piazza del Castello and served traditional food in a nice yet casual environment. We shared half of a large outdoor fourtop table with a young Italian couple who were there a bit before us. The whole place was like this. Long tables shared between guests, typical of an osteria. An osteria generally is a casual restaurant with an emphasis on “bar food” Italian-style. This is a Michelin plate osteria so the food was great and the place was busy with many Italians. We really enjoyed the meal and the setting left for our long walk back with very full stomachs. I’d certainly go back there again. I think the Michelin guide might be the way to go. My favorite restaurant in Pallaza also is on the Michelin plate list. I didn’t know that, but it’s the best restaurant I’ve eaten at on this side of town so that makes sense. There is also a Michelin star restaurant here in Pallanza but I don’t think I have the budget or desire to try that right now. 

After walking and sweating a ton today, I’m ready to go to bed with plans to do a long ride tomorrow. I’ll post more photos from our day sometime tomorrow, I’m just running out of energy and photos take a while to load and configure with our internet situation. 

Insieme- Together

The last time I did the ride we did today, I wrote on this blog a post called Solo-Alone  In this post, I wrote about how this ride was one ride of many that is inevitably the solo ride. This time, I had Kristen to share the ride with. Last time it felt like a long ride; today we rode even more miles that my previous route and it went by as quickly as any other 70 mile ride. Riding alone is part of cycling training, but I was glad to have company today... and everyday, really.

We started in a roundabout way (no pun intended, there are tons of roundabouts here), heading towards the scenic panoramic road just for variety. We rode through Intra, made a few turns, and I realized we should be going a different way. An awkward turnaround later, we were headed in a better direction, and of course uphill. In an effort to find a little quieter roads, we avoided the lakeside Strada Statale, in favor of a little road parallel to it, up on the ridge. The scenery is better, there are less cars, and the little climb to get up there is a good warm-up. 

About 10km later we were back down along the lake, on a beautiful section of road, heading north towards Cannobio, where our turn north west into Valle Cannobio awaited us. Seeing as how we were already 30km into the ride and we had a 22km climb ahead of us, we stopped for a quick snack on a park bench under some pine trees, and then carried on for 22km of mild grades through the valley while passing a half dozen villages along the way. There could of been a hundred times that we could have stopped to take photographs, the scenery was that beautiful, but once you’re climbing, you don’t really want to stop. 

At the summit of the pass, we stopped to admire a monument placed in rememberance of Marco Pantani, wherein one of his local fan clubs dedicated the pass to him. From there we descended quickly to a little town called Malesco. Malesco is one these beautiful places that let you know quickly that you are practically in Switzerland. The architecture is half Italian/ half Swiss. Especially notable are the stone roofs that you typically see on mountainside huts making their way into larger buildings in town. I got a little lost in Malesco last time I did this ride, which while beautiful, is especially challenging because most of the town is paved in stone. Not really cobbles, actual stone. It’s tough to ride on, especially when you’re lost and making lots of turns while staring at the Garmin map. Today, we make the correct turns and were out of it all too quickly. 

We likely would have stopped there if not for the impending rain between us and Domodossola, which was our destination for a late lunch. Mountain weather is very strange. It’s very hard to read where it’s raining, where it’s going to rain, etc. With that unpredictability’s in mind, we pressed on, up a painful false flat uphill before the remaining descend began. 

Just as we started heading down, the rain started, I think. I say “I think” because I’m not actually sure it was raining much, but it must have just poured. The roads were soaked. It was a bummer for two reasons. First, this descent is one of my favorites I’ve ever done. It’s not really technical, the road is a State road so it’s wide, and the pavement is everything you’d expect from a bigger road on the Italian/ Swiss border. Unfortunately we had to take it more gently since we were pretty well soaked. Secondly, the giant Swiss Alps just beyond Domodossola were hidden by a curtain of thick clouds, and that view was one of the most memorable from my previous trip here in 2014.

One of my favorite things about this descent is the 700m tunnel that we go through. It’s probably a 8% grade downhill through it, and it’s very well lit. Today we couldn’t zoom through as quickly as I did last time, which was a bummer because I was really looking forward to it. I almost want to do this ride again just to do that descent. Once we exited the tunnel, it was like it had never rained. The roads were dry, but now we were stuck behind some cars. I hate getting stuck behind cars of descents. Ruins all the fun!

We stopped in Domodossola to eat lunch as planned. Domodossola is a railway hub for trains into and out of Switzerland through the Simpson Pass, which is of historic significance. Domodossola has existed in some capacity since before the Roman Empire. It’s an interesting town because so of it is so historic and well preserved, while a lot of it is modernized. That’s Italy really. It’s not just a tourist attraction, people live and work there every single day. I wouldn’t mind living there. 

We visited Piazza del Mercato which is beautiful. Less beautiful, but equally interesting to us was a quick stop in at Barale Ciclomania bike shop. When Michael at Wheelfine says he has a European-style bike shop, he’s not lying. This shop is exactly like Wheelfine except the ceilings are higher, which allows for even more inventory stacked sixteen feet in the air. An older husband and wife must own the place. It’s filled with Italian everything. I wish we could visit it without our bike so we could really browse. One of the most interesting things about the shop is that the service portion and the sales portions are in two different shops across the street from each other. I guess they ran out of space. It’s a little nutty but after spending so much time at Wheelfine, I felt very at home there. Apparently they have another store in Verbania Intra, so we’ll try to visit that at some point too. 

Our ride home was flat as anything gets here. We were flying for the most part. First though the “Italian Suburbs” which was very strange. It’s weird to see individual houses on flat land with their own yards all grouped together. It’s not totally like American developments, but it’s like nothing else we’ve seen in Italy anywhere else. We zoomed through one town then the next until we arrived in Mergozzo. Mergozzo is a really lovely town on Lago Mergozzo, just south of Lago Maggiore. We stopped there for one final snack after trading some tough pulls on the flat road. We stayed a while to watch a guy and his very happy dog play fetch off the dock and into the lake. The dog had endless energy. Since we didn’t, we cruised back the last five miles into Pallanza and the day of riding was done. A nice 70 miles in the books. 

The big event of the evening was Kristen cooking her own dinner. I helped her a little bit, but she did it mostly herself. She really wanted Spaghetti alle Vongole but since lupini di mare were priced better, she prepared them instead. Basically the same as clams, just smaller. Being a vegetarian, I know only one thing about cooking shellfish, which is that if they don’t open, you don’t eat them. Kristen did a great job of cooking them with white wine and while a few flew like popped corn when we added the shelled meat to the olive oil, Kristen said it was pretty succuessful. Since she prepared a half pound of pasta she’ll have some leftovers for another meal. Seafood can be expensive but if she gets two and half meals out of it, not bad. Cooking from a recipe is tough, especially for a person who doesn’t cook. There is a lot of intuitaion that comes from experience and a lot of finese that can be lost when having to read a recipe, so I think the next time she ventures into clams it’ll come more naturally. Regardless, her meal turned out better than mine. My meal got away from me. At least the bread and salad were really good. My pasta... not so much. 

After a little evening walk down to the lake, midnight is here and past. Tomorrow we’ll take a rest day and do some tourist activities. We’ll visit the Borromean Islands and maybe Villa Taranto. I’ll try to take lots of pictures. I did bring my real camera.