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.