Planes, trains & automobiles (with a bicycle)

Never again will I travel with a bicycle --- only upon one.

I have finally made it home after 4 days of canceled and delayed flights in Dublin - which is probably the best place to have been stranded with a free hotel paid by the airline. I could not help but take advantage of the city's night life with some fellow stranded passengers during my unexpected stay. Despite the frustration of not being able to arrive home as originally planned, I embraced the independence - especially after being a welcomed guest in the Adrian's apartment during our extended visit in Lacoste.

While having a wonderful visit with my family in Parma for Christmas, I decided that it was time to return back to the states. There are many reasons for my return, one of which is the fact that cycling would not have been the primary focus during our upcoming months in Europe. I truly enjoyed the nomadic adventure of cycling from campsite to campsite, and since this pattern was determined to be improbable in near future, it made sense for me to leave the group. Despite cutting this trip short, I really valued the time spent with my friends as we had many great experiences along the way. I wish all of the girls well and success with their future travels. I also would like to thank everyone for their continued support before and during my adventure. Although the trip did not turn out as I had originally imagined, everyone's positivity and enthusiasm has remained with me and will continue to do so. No regrets. On to the next adventure...whatever it may be :)

- huli

Leaving Roma...Lost at Trevi Fountain

On the Train

Emma at Trevi

The Skinny Bathroom

Trevi Fountain
Gen's Room out at our apt. in Rome

St. Peter's Square Christmas Eve

Georgia, Emma and my's room The Vatican: midnight mass

Leaving Rome was an epic first day of riding for Georgia and I. It was hard enough navigating the narrow one way cobble streets with racing cars and motor bikes, but on top of it all there were tourists. We decided to stop by the famous Trevi Fountian on the way to the train station for a quick last second tourist fill of the Roman sights. It was something I had wanted to do and it seemed relativily practical. Emma was able to navigate us there very quickly, all the while bumping along the small roads. We burst out of one narrow street into the throngs of tourists snapping photos and thwoing coins (over 3,000 euro is thrown into the Trevi Fountain each day). We soon became part of the spectacle with numerous people asking us where we were from, wanting to shake our hands and cheer us on.

We left the fountain quickly finding oursleves on a busy, wide, paved, road that soon turned into a scary looking tunnel. Retreat, retreat, u-turn. Rome was a perfect place to practice the signs that Emma and Gen had intorduced to us the previous day, slow down\stop, u-turn, turning left\right and bump\hole\rubble. We headed back towards the fountain, stopping a couple blocks from it so Emma and Georgia could look at the cartoon map we had to Rome to figure out our next move. They soon took off and Gen and I quickly followed, unfourtuantly tour group number 27 got between us. Gen ringed her bell and we said sucsi but nothing seemed to work, the mass of people kept coming filling in all space between us and Emma and Georgia. As soon as we had taken off the two of them had disapeared in the crowds. With many little roads leading in out of the fountian and surrounding area we had no idea which road to take. We were seperated. Gen and I decided to head down to the fountain in hopes that they had noticed we were not behind them. There was no sign of them at the fountain so we went in the direction we thought was right, no sign of them. We went back to the fountain, no sign. We made a plan, wait ten minuets, if there was no sign of them we would get a map and make our way to the train station.

After a couple minuets I decided to leave Gen with explicit instructions to not leave the fountain. I headed up the street where we had last seem them, the section was only 500 feet but it was slow progress due to the meandering people and cafe tables blocking the way. At a small side street I spoted Georgia panic eyed and looking concerned, her face soon turned to relief when she saw me. Reunited and it feeels so good! Emma quickly apeared and we babbled about what had happened. I went to retreive Gen and we were on our way again. We made it to the train station with no more problems, swiftly navigating traffic circles and large intersections. Even though we only road 5.3 miles it was still very epic.

Doing what happens in Rome is awesome.

Well, Lucy and I made it, finally! We departed from New York on December 23 and arrived in Dublin early in the morning on Christmas eve where flights had been delayed for about 1 week due to bad weather. Our flight was only delayed about an hour and a half but we took off from runways that were covered in sheets of ice and about 5 inches of snow. We arrived in Rome and had to wait about an hour and a half for our bikes to come out of the oversized luggage door and then proceeded to push them through customs and then finally out of the airport where we were greeted by Gen and Emma who had been waiting there for about 4 hours for us to arrive, what loyalty!

After napping a bit back at our cute little apartment that was just a stones throw from the Vatican, we had some dinner and then went and watched the Pope give midnight mass from St. Peters Square. He was in the Basilica performing the mass and we watched from the square where tons of people had gathered to watch him on the 2 or 3 large projetors that had been set up.

The next day, Christmas, after a good nights sleep, we had a wonderful xmas breakfast, fritatta and breakfast potatoes that Gen made for us. It was accompanied by lots of champagne and a few little presents. We spent the day walking around, hanging in the internet cafe, and finished the day with a wonderful xmas dinner at the closest Chinese restaurant, one of the only things open at the time.

Then yesterday we took a super long walk to the colleseum and then to the pantheon and back, a huge loop around the city. It was beautiful and really great to be able to see the whole city on foot. It was really neat being able to see all the old architecture, narrow cobblestone streets, and historical sights.

Rome has been really great altogether and it feels great to be here with the girls. Lucy and I have been waiting for this for so long, jealous that Gen and Emma were doing it all without us. We're so excited to be here and cannot wait for the next steps.

SNOW and BICYCLES dont mix well

After droping huli off in La Spezia Gen and I got back on the road to continue our journey south. With the flat terrain and the wind at our backs we were making great time until we decided it was time for lunch. Gen saw a sign for a grocery store that we knew had tasty and cheep cheese doodles and our search began!!!! After riding a "few" miles out of the way we finaly found the store and our doodles. Gen went in first and after what seemed to be really long time she came out and told me the check out lines were extremely long. So in I went to brave the crowds of people for my bag of cheese doodles and after about another hour I emereged from the store to eat my lunch. At this point we were both freezing cold and decided that rather than stop early and camp we would ride untill dark and stay in a hotel. Shortly before dark we rode through some sort of national park where there were prostitutes sitting in front of bombfires just off the road (really weird to see). That night we made it to Pisa and after checking the prices at several hotels we found one for 50€ a night just before it got really dark. That night we went for a walk and found the leaning tower. It was a really interesting feeling to see something so monumental at night when there were no other sightseers around. Unfortuntally neither of us brought our cameras so after treking the mile back to our hotel we headed out again to take some picutures. After a long day of biking 90km and walking 4mi we slept well in our cozy hotel room.

The next morning we awoke to gray skys and joked about the fact that it looked like snow. We went for our complimentatry breakfast before heading out for the day. The next thing I knew I looked out the window and it atually was snowing!!!!! Unsure what to do we headed back to our room to weigh our options. We stood at the window for a while pretending like we could and would spend the day biking in the snow (we really knew that we would never leave our nice warm dry and afordable room). After we got tired of pretending we realized that we had made the right decision because it snowed all day and the roads got really bad. We spent the rest of the day roaming the city trying to find a gorcery store and allthough we never did we did get to see the leaning tower of Pisa in the snow.

The next day we woke up to find that the roads were still pretty icy as we could see people were shuffling along the roads rather than taking steps. As we watched people shuffle by for a while we decided to head to the train station and catch a ride to Rome (there was more bad weather coming). After packing our bikes and carrying them down the stairs (very tramatic and difficult when fully loaded) we checked out of the hotel. Once at the train station Gen guarded the bikes while I went in to investigate our options. Boy was it a mob sceen in there. Most of the trains were running late and the entire waiting room was filled with people trying to get information. I went back out to gen to report on the sceen and then went back to get in line. About 3 seconds later i realized that we werent going anywhere on this day and we headed back to the hotel. Since we had only been checked out for about a half hour our room was still available and hadnt even been cleaned yet. Later on we saw a news report on the caos at the train staiton.

On the third day we were getting a little stir crazy so we just decided to ride even though the roads still looked slightly bad. With in ten minutes I hear Gens bike slide alittle and as I ask her if she just skidded my bike almost slips out from under me. Luckily to roads werent too bad so this didnt happen too often. We were happily on our way when we came to a road block and could see no way around except to go all the way back from where we came. After going way out of our way to get back on the road we found once again that it was closed but seeing that no one was there to stop us we got on it anyway. Turns out they were just plowing and cleaning up from the storm so becides for the occational maintance truck we had the road all to ourselves. After riding down the Coast for quite a ways it started to rain and we strated to look for a place to spend the night. The village we stopped in seemed to be a ghost town and after stopping at every hotel the best offer was 86€ so we continued on. By stopping at the information center we learned that the town 4km down the road had a train that went to Rome and also a one star hotel. At this point it was already 3:30 and we were unsure of going to Rome in the dark so we checked all the hotels we could only to find none of them would let us bring our bikes inside so we ended up at the train station.

After finding someone who spoke some english to help me with the ticket machine we were ready to get on the train. Being alot more organized this time we rememberd to stamp our tickets and calmly got our bikes on the train. After stitting in the bike compartment for a while I started to get a little stir carzy and cold and thus began our dance party. Since the compartment was open we had plenty of space to move around. We danced and danced untill we realized that the train conductor could probably see us through the one way window in his compartment. After another couple of hours we arived in Rome carried our bikes down the stairs and out of the train station. Luckily for us there were pleny of hotels near by and we found a nice affordable one.

So here we are waiting for Lucy and Georgia to continue our adventures.

-Emma

ps...sorry if there are spelling errors but the Italian spell ckeck doesnt help much.

Always stamp your ticket!!!

Today is Wednesday, December 15th, 2010. We're sitting in a hotel room in La Spezia, Italia. Tomorrow Huli will split off from us, visiting family she has in the area for the holiday. Emma and I will continue on, meeting up with Lucy and Georgia, and it will prove to be the best Christmas present we could ask for.
Since we last updated, we have left our unexpected home base of Lacoste, France, traveling east along the Mediterranean coast, climbing and descending many mountains along the way. After sweating our "buns" off on one of our longest and steepest "hills," followed by a bone numbing descent, we decided to no longer face the cold. Quick thinking, driven by the approach of hypothermia, we hopped on a train to our current location. Getting to the station with 7 minutes to spare, we got out our tickets, ran to the platform, carrying our fully loaded bicycles up two flights of stairs , and we made our train. As the train arrived, we ran to the bicycle car at the front of the train and hopped on as fast as we could load our bikes. We were so relieved to make the train that we did not realize we were expected to "stamp" our tickets in the yellow machine. As a result, we were fined an extra 30 euro (more than double the ticket price itself) which dampened the mood a slight bit.
So here we are, freshly bathed and fed, sipping beers and watching American pop music videos. We hope everyone has a very happy holiday season!!!