Ok, NOW we're in Trieste

Just about a washout of a day.  And there was so much promise!  I had planned to head uphill to get away from the traffic and onto some small, windy roads through little villages.  Then we'd drop down into Trieste, check it out, then continue to a small campsite in Slovenia that the previous camp had told us about.  Awesome!

Instead, it started to rain just as we were leaving camp and never really stopped.  We got up into the hills, which were very lovely, but eventually came down because of all the rain.  It was a potentially exhilarating descent to Trieste, but the rain and cold made it more terrifying.  It was already late enough (and still raining) so we decided to stay in Trieste.

But on to silver linings!  We contacted the host that we did not stay with last night, and are staying with her tonight.  So, we are indoors when we need it most.  The rain has stopped for now and we had a nice walk around the main plaza and had a quick dinner.  We just finished getting tips on cycling in Croatia from our host (who is from Croatia) so we have lots of insider information.  We're hoping for nicer weather tomorrow and a trip to the Croatian coast!

Towards Trieste

Not the most exciting day.  There are only two roads through a lot of this area, the highway and SS14, a pretty busy road.  We stuck to small roads and the occasional dirt track as much  as possible, but SS14 was often unavoidable. 

I think things are going to start getting awesome.  As we passed Monfalcone and turned towards Trieste, hills and mountains suddenly appeared!  We even had to climb for a while to end the day!  Alicia is somewhat less excited than I am for upcoming mountains but I hope she comes around. 

Tonight we camp again.  It was a very touristy campground in Caorle, and also very expensive.  Turns out what we want it "agritourist" camping.  Not quite roughing it, but smaller and quieter and about half the cost.

Tomorrow we'll go into Slovenia, and depending on the route, possibly into Croatia as well!

Pictures from Venice

Quick day 1 update

A successful first day on the road.  We got a relatively late start, very typical for the first day as it takes time to get everything ready to go.  We never heard from our potential hosts, so the route was Mestre to Treviso to San Dona di Piave to Caorle (Bibione proved too far given our starting time).  Turns out Caorle is an enormous beach resort town - it's actually really nice!  Google it, I'm sure there are pictures out there.  Ooh, good segway - I may be somewhat limited in uploading pictures.  I have a limited international data plan that would be destroyed by uploading lots of pictures.  And Europe is extremely stingy with their Wi-Fi!  I have yet to find free access, including restaurants and coffee shops.  The closest we came was a municipal network that needed me to send a text message with a password.  First, that's a hassle, and second, I don't want to deal with international text charges.  Oh well.  Next time we get some Wi-Fi I'll throw a bunch of pictures on the blog.  Get pumped!

Venice

Had a great couple days in Venice.  With all the flight delays we arrived at around 7:00 PM, rather than 1:00 as planned.  We biked from the airport to the hotel - always feels great to bike away from an airport!  By the time we got settled we decided to just stick around Mestre for the night instead of go into Venice for a couples hours, which would feel forced and put as at risk of crashing (tiredness, not biking) too soon.  So, we went out for pizza (what else?) and had an early night.

Yesterday was beautiful and sunny and we spent the whole day walking all over the city.  We saw all the big sites (Rialto, San Marco, etc), saw a few museums and generally wandered around the canals.  We started to fade around dinner (jet lag) so we headed home, where I immediately fell asleep, until waking up at 11 and struggling to fall asleep again (jet lag).

Today it was cold and pouring and thunderstorms all day.  It was torrential rain as we waited for the bus, but that eventually cleared and I hoped it was done for the day.  We got a couple hours of dryness before it started again, and continued for most of the day.  But it wasn't so bad!  After walking all day yesterday we devoted today to traveling on water.  We got an all-day Vaporetto pass (the public water bus) and rode that everywhere.  It has a roof and a cabin so we could stay dry.  We went to other, smaller islands and rode it up the Grand Canal - like a big, shared gondola ride, but without a surly gondolier smoking and checking his phone the whole time.  We ended up damp but not soaked, which counts as a victory.

We looked at possible routes and lodging for tomorrow, and if you're following along, here's the plan.  We will bike from Mestre to Treviso, then turn east to San Dona di Piave.  Where we go from there depends on an email we sent to potential WarmShowers hosts (see: warmshowers.com).  If we have a host, we will head towards Portogruaro for the night.  If not, we turn towards the coast and follow it to Bibione (disclaimer: I've never heard of these places aside from seeing them on a map today, but they do sound extremely Italian).  There is lots of camping along the coast and none in Portogruaro.  So that's that.  Everything is susceptible to change if it's a rainy mess tomorrow and we decide to find a room somewhere, or wait out a storm and don't make it to Portogruaro.  All those fun aspects of making the best of bad weather!

Biking away from the airport

I roughly translate this as "I think this will be fun but I'm not sure I'm completely convinced yet!"

Made it to Venice!

Well, to Mestre.  We are staying in a hotel here, the town on the mainland across from Venice.  While it's nice to save a few bucks, the big reason is that bikes are potentially simply not allowed in Venice. Where would you ride them, right?  Rather than risk arriving in town and being told we could go no farther, we decided just to stay in Mestre.  It's nice enough here at Hotel Aurora.

The bikes came out mostly fine.  A couple scratches and a rotated seat, but functionally everything seems fine.  Another nice perk is that they didn't charge us for the bikes.  In my experience the amount charged at the gate is completely random and has no relationship to the amount listed on the website.  We expected $150 per bike, so it's a pretty significant savings!  In fact, between that and ~$100 that we saved by not boxing the bikes, we have a goal - once we start biking we will try to keep our food expenses to less than the $400 that we didn't spend on the bikes.  That's a lot of peanut butter!

Frankfurt airport vehicles

Our flight from Boston was delayed and we missed our connection, so we've been hanging out in Frankfurt for the past few hours.  We just sat down in front of a big window overlooking an inter-terminal area, and you would not believe the number of entertaining airport vehicles out there!   We see:
- a dump truck, being filled with dirt and dumping it elsewhere
- a scooper (backhoe?), filling the aforementioned dump truck
- a truck that picked up a dumpster and drove away with it (not just a garbage truck, it actually removed the dumpster)
- a backhoe pretending to be a crane
- bendy bus
- non-bendy bus (ummm, a bus?)
- luggage trucks
- vacuum/street cleaning truck
- airplane tugs
- airplanes
- catering truck
- various cars and vans
- unidentified construction machinery

If anyone knows any 4-year-olds I recommend taking them on vacation to terminal A in the Frankfurt airport.

Also, airport staff is moving around the terminals by riding bicycles - equipped with generator-powered headlights, as required by German law!

Boxless bikes

We were told that you don't need to put the bikes in a box for Lufthansa, which sounds crazy.  I called them 4 different times to confirm, mostly having this conversation :

ME: So I don't need a box? 

LUFTHANSA: Nope! 

ME: Ummm, even from Boston?  

LUFTHANSA: Correct. 

ME:  Ummm, OK... 

It seems too European to work at Logan.  Anyway, we rode from home to the airport (which was terrible), put some foam on the bikes, and some nice baggage handlers took them away.  I assume if we ever see them again they will be crumpled up into a ball.