It was Monday, and what we have been waiting for- the biking- finally started. Firencz (the bike guy, as he is listed in Tsana’s contacts) met us outside promptly at 9am to set us up with our bikes. After paying the man, learning our bikes, and giving him our luggage (because there is no way we were lugging all that stuff with us), we got on the road around 10am, and had to deal with a tiny bit of Matera traffic before finally getting into the serene countryside (but it was NOTHING compared to Boston traffic). Our first goal was the town of Gioia del Colle, a “short” 25 miles away. The scenery was a lot of rolling wheat fields, and we luckily didn’t deal with many cars, which was nice. We did see a lot of cows, cows, and more cows (and some horses).
In Gioia del Colle, we had a fine enough lunch, enough to get some needed energy to tackle the next 20 miles which was probably the most grueling. Best part of lunch wasn’t the meal, but was the hilarious server, who when we asked if he could fill up our waterbottles, he came out with 3 bottles of water so we could do it ourselves - he knew what was up.
At mile 15 we dealt with some challenging hills (we had other NSFW words for them) getting into the next town of Nico. Dave was craving an orange hard-core, but no grocery stores could be found. Life lession about being in Italy, just because Google Maps says it’s there, doesn’t mean that’s actually the case. AND just because it may actually exist, doesn’t mean it’s open, especially if it’s between 12-6 (siesta time). Alas, we continued onto our final destination of Alberobello.
We rolled (well, at this point, we were walking the bikes) into Alberobello around 4:30pm and after some instructions from the hotel manager, we finally made it into our Trulli home, which is very cute, and has a lovely beaded entrance to the door - think 90s hanging beads that went into your closet. After getting organized, SHOWERED (best showers of our lives), and settled into our new place we did a little tour of the town before heading out to dinner.
Dinner was just fine, and many Americans were there, which usually means we shouldn’t go there, but we had reservations, so we went. Our best meal to date was the random place we found the first night in Matera, but honestly, anything we find here is better than the USA. Say with us: “No GMOs!”
After dinner, we sought out a gelato shop which was delicous. The girls each had Salted Butter a quite unique and delicous flavor while Dave ran with Salted Caramel; salted gelatos are the Italian’s Gatorades/electrolytes.
After dessert, we had a night cap, with 2 Euro Peroni’s (Tsana had a Limonata) on our terrace overlooking the trulli houses which was very peaceful. And we woke up the next morning realizing we should have stretched, but here we are…to another day.
