Friday...

After breakfast, I spend a couple of hours building the bikes back to their former glory and upgrade Freya’s slick tires to grippy ones. Like trying to stuff milk back into a cow.
Meanwhile, Freya is looking for a place to stay for the night. It seems to take ages with all the choices online but finally she books us a place in a cute little guest house.
Clean up, bags on bikes and take a last look around the beautiful old courtyard before heading off towards Greve in Chianti.

It feels a bit awkward to be back on the bikes after so long without the extra weight on the back. I left a couple of nuts and bolts in Berlin so we look for a bike shop to fix us up, but settle for a little hardware store. The man inside speaks no English, but knows what’s up. He empties three tins of bits and pieces all over the floor and we search together. A passer by even joins in for good measure and all is good and free. I love Italianos.
We are in the best cycling area of Italy and there are many passing riders on their daily ride or training. All are super happy and waiving us with many ciaos and bon giornos.
It doesn’t take long for us to come across the first hill as this place is in the mountains, but we are still surprised when we see it. Fools. Freya jumps off and walks the last hundred metres.

The views are amazing from every angle. It looks just like the postcards and films and we are grinning like pigs in mud all the way through the rolling downhills and climbs to Greve.

Arriving in Greve is such a great scene. Little houses all over the tiny town plotted on hills and down alleys. So many locals and everyone seems to know everyone here. It’s great. Time to find our house.
After asking many locals the direction, and being met with blank gazes, we finally discover our place to stay is about fifteen km back the way we came. Ah. Everything seems booked, but the tourism lady finds us an amazing place on the hill overlooking the town and hills around with a huge garden and pool area. Bene. Panorama shot you see is from our window.

We explore the town and relax with a big bottle of Moretti beer at this great little pizza place that has a big roll of porchetta that is sliced into bread that’s baked to order. Holy crap it is amazing.

Dinner is simple and in a litle trattoria. Such perfect pastas. Pene for me and Freya has the local fresh porchini taglialini. Ja.

We are exhausted after the longest ride in about ten months so we retire.