Italy

By the time I entered Italy for the second time I felt that I could ride forever. But I also wanted to spend some time at home. After leaving Tommaso in the northern town of Domodossola, I finally decided that I would try to push myself hard and see how long it would take me to cycle down the middle of the Appennine Mountains to Calabria. I arrived home in nine days, at a rate of just over one hundred miles a day, which I guess is ok considering that the bike was loaded and that I was climbing up to 6000 feet a day. I took slightly fewer photos, but by the time I arrived home I felt stronger than ever before.

The Alps, which still tower high above the Lago d'Orta, stop abruptly and give way to the flattest region in Italy, the alluvial plain of the river Po. The endless rice paddies can make for boring cycling, but I was lucky: a huge rice harvester going at about 40km/h overtook me, I entered its draft, and suddenly the rice fields were flying by at Tour de France speed with hardly any effort on my part.

Many American friends had told me about the Cinque Terre, but I could never answer their questions. When I finally arrived there on my bicycle the weather was hazy, but I had no difficulty understanding why this little strip of rugged coastline is so famous with tourists. Strangely, though, I felt that I was almost the only Italian in an ocean of Germans, Belgians, Americans, and French people.

Whenever I go to Tuscany I leave feeling that I haven't spent enough time there. My main discovery this time was San Gimignano, a tiny medieval hill town renowned for its tall lookout towers. Unfortunately, and predictably, it was overrun by tourists, but late at night and early in the morning I could almost make myself believe that I was alone and that the place belonged to me.

Beyond the town walls, the countryside is a marvel of pastel colors and geometric patterns.

A day after leaving San Gimignano, I ate lunch and sent postcards from the charming main square of Montefalco. I watched from a corner as a happy little boy abandoned his training wheels.

Central Italy is a patchwork of mountains and rolling farmland. Today many of the beautiful little hilltowns are on the verge of demographic collapse; families have few children, and younger people tend to move away from the countryside to find better jobs.

The Parco Nazionale d'Abruzzo contains some of the region's most spectacular scenery.

I had been pedaling in a heat-induced daze for a morning when I cycled across a bridge above the mouth of the river Sele, near Salerno. I decided to stop and look around, and took my first pictures of the day.

During the last two days of my trip the heat did not let up. It was mid-September, so the dark and frigid polar night would soon be descending on Nordkapp, but I was very, very far away from there. While the Sami moved their herds of reindeer south, I was being tempted by the warm turquoise waters of the Mediterranean.

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