Of course by the time the train reached Bologna, all connections had been missed. The only train that was going further was a part of the one I was one, which was headed to Milan. I decided to go on to Milan and catch a morning train to Paris, France. Arriving in Milan at 2 am and having my train leave at 9 am gave me several hours of wondering around Milan at night, which was actually pretty interesting.

My second trip to Italy, after France and Germany, also entailed fun with trains. It actually started in Nice, France, where we arrived after an overnight train from Germany. We were headed to Florence (Firenze in Italian), but wanted to arrive there with our bicycles. Since the anal French would not allow us to take bikes on trains, we had to ship them. Yet they would not ship bikes internationally, so we had to ship them as close to Italy as we could come, which was Nice. After picking up our bikes in Nice we took a slow train to Ventimiglia in Italy, where we had to wait for a train to Torino (no trains to Firenze allowed bicycles). The wait was quite long, so we decided to go for a bike ride to the next town, Camporose, meaning “red field” where Deep and Jothi got to relax while I went for a swim. It was actually a cute little town that we would not have discovered otherwise.

We did eventually make it to Torino where we stayed for the night. In the morning, we had to play games with trains in order to catch ones that allowed bicycles. We had to take a train to Milano, then another to Bologna. We spent a nice day biking around and exploring Bologna and then took an evening train to Firenze (at last!). So rather than the nice Germany - Firenze overnight train we had hoped for, we got: Germany - Nice - Ventimiglia - Milan - Bologna - Firenze slow 2-day trek instead. Yes, that’s the beauty of trying in vain to take bikes on trains in Italy and France...

In Firenze, we got rather unlucky with the lodging situation. Deep had been there before and did not have any trouble finding lodging, so we did not bother coming early in the day. That was a mistake. We barely got a place on the first night, which only had two beds (so I took the floor), and a rather unpleasant odor. I had a reservation, but it was given away since we showed up too late to claim it. We moved to another place for the following nights, but the woman who runs the hotel got us by showing one room (quiet so I can sleep), and giving us another in a building across the street (that faced a somewhat loud street).

The art of Florence more than made up for its poor accommodations. I think Florence has some of the best art I’ve seen, both in the museums and the buildings. We spent two full days exploring Florence. Even though Deep has been there before, it’s one of his favorite cities, so I don’t think he minded it much. We even managed to catch an opera of La Boheme on the second night.

On the third day in Tuscany, we met up with Deep’s friends Giovanni and Chiara, and Giovanni joined the three of us for a day of biking through the non-trivial hills of Tuscany’s Chianti and Chianti Classico regions. It was just as you would think biking would be in Tuscany - very hilly, lots of green wine grapes growing all around, small roads past quaint little towns and having a picnic lunch on a church cresting a hills. Upon our return to San Casciano, near Florence, Chiara made us a splendid dinner that satiated extremely well after a full day of biking.

Our final full day in Tuscan was spent with Giovanni and Chiara driving to the castle at Monteriggioni, the city of Sienna, and the wine town of Montalcino before returning to Florence. On July 12, we set off to Assisi, a wondrous town on a hill overlooking the valley of the region of Umbria. The views from Assisi were very nice, but we initially had to enjoy them a bit nervously as Jothi got separated from Deep and myself on the bike ride up the hill from the train station. He eventually did find us by spotting our bikes parked in front of the hotel, and we spent the rest of day exploring Assisi.

The day after that, we went biking through Umbria’s flat regions connecting the hill towns. Our bikes took us to Spello and then Foligno and finally Montefalco. We biked back to Foligno, luckily found a place to ship our bikes back to the U.S., rather than trying to deal with them on trains again, and took the train back to Assisi.

On Tuesday, July 14, we set off with a mission of buying some wines in the Piedmont region. Starting at 5:30 in the morning, we caught a train to Florence, another to Pisa (which Deep almost missed by getting on the wrong train), and up to Genoa. Having a few hours in Genoa, we checked in to a hotel and explored for a bit before taking a train on to Asti, and at last another to Alba. By the time we got to Alba, we had just an hour to visit a few wine shops where Deep got a couple of bottles and I picked one up. Then it was time to return via train to Asti, where we watched a beautiful sunset, then to Alessandria, and finally back to stay in Genova.

I have heard wonderful things about Cinque Terre, and Deep has been there and liked it, so we decided to spend the next day there. It turned out to be a very nice set of fishing cliff towns in the Italian Riviera. The train dropped us off in Riomaggiore from where we hiked Via Dell’Amore to Manarola, Vernazza, and a boat to Monterosso before returning to Genova and taking a night train to Barcelona in Spain.