BAC Le Marche - The Adriatic Coast to the Sibylline Mountains 2010

Please visit today's food slide show

Our breakfast was very skimpy – no fruit and no cereal. We had to get by with croissants and cakes from the previous night. The coffee was very strong so I only had one cup. My stomach thanked me.

I was on the road around 8:15 riding solo. The skies were very dark and rain was threatening. It was also a little cool – in the 50’s so I wore arm warmers with my light jacket. I managed to catch the main group after a couple of kms and went out ahead with Richard and Carolyn on their tandem.

The route had two major climbs with a bunch of little ones in between. Some of the riding was on ridges where we would have gotten great views if it weren’t for the clouds. It was fairly cool at 2400 feet but it warmed up when we got lower.

I stopped at Case Nuove di Castellano for cappuccino and a chocolate croissant with the tandem pair after a great downhill. Then we forged on for the last 10 km to Ascoli Piceno. As we traversed to town to find our hotel, my GPS led us onto some very narrow cobblestone streets. We got to Gioli Hotel in Ascoli Piceno around noon beating the luggage van by at least 1/2 hour.

Here is today's route.

After I cleaned up, Ann and I went to lunch at Gallo D'Oro. It is a mid-sized restaurant with gold table cloths and nice crystal. There was one other table filled when we arrived, but a couple of others soon had diners. I had linguine with ham, radicchio, pine nuts and onions. Ann had lasagnatta (small lasagna). Both were very good.

I not only talk about food, I can take photos of it, too.

We all walked over to Happy Hour at a cafe near the main town piazza. The theme tonight was a test to see if we were paying attention during the other Happy Hours. Tom introduced the first person. Then he pointed to someone else and the first person had to introduce that person using all of the information we gathered about each other in previous meetings. This went on and on until the last person was introduced. I introduced Dave Smith. Luckily, we had eaten meals with Dave and Sue and I used lots of information about him that I learned as we chatted at our meals. The session was fun especially when Judy Ashby introduced Rod Harman with totally ficticious information.

We had dinner with six other people at Ristoranti La Locandiera. It is a medium-sized restaurant with a fixed menu. We heard about it from friends that had been on a previous tour. The meal included several courses with wine. We started out with several antipasti – salami with strawberries and cheese, stuffed fried olives with another fried ball of sweet potato, some stuffed pastries and white beans with bacon. Our first course was linguini with a tomato and mushroom sauce. Our main course was game hen in a salty vinaigrette sauce along with roasted potatoes. We finished the meal with biscotti and vin santo. It was a memorable meal. (Please look at today's food slide show to view the plates).

At 11:00 - the latest we had been up on this trip - it was time for bed.