The ride from Briancon to Genoa was stunning. Mile after mile of gorgeous alpine twisty roads with scenery to die for. Plus there was the occasional relaxed mileage across Italian plains. Sadly we entered Genoa from the wrong end and had twenty torturous kms of outer dock area suburbs to transverse (very slowly as there was a lot of traffic) before parking up and choosing a city centre hotel to head towards. The Starhotels President. On arrival at this quite grand hotel the snooty manager then said he only had one expensive room with double bed. At this point I explained how I could book a far cheaper room at his hotel with twin beds via “Booking.com” – and showed him. He then gave up the fight and booked us into a very nice room.
Genoa had a very pleasant city centre though we had great difficulty finding a good restaurant. Ultimately “Google maps” found us a self service place which was brimful of locals. We both had a good meal with dessert and in my case 25cl of wine for 10 euro. A steal. Later in the evening I found a small bar in a side street full of locals and a drunken landlord. Before paying the nominal amount for our drinks he insisted I share a cocktail with him – for free!
This morning we took a toll Road to Florence. All went well until we got there. If you’ve never been there I can tell you Florence’s centre (where our hotel is) is a rabbits warren of small cobbled streets. And many of them were being dug up, were closed or were one way (the wrong way). Ultimately we parked the bikes near the river and walked to the hotel. This was just as well as the garage it uses was 700m away.
However the bikes are now parked up, we’ve done a reccee of Florence and bought some provisions for the race tomorrow. Just got to organise dinner.