Day +1: 6/19/22

Some sociological thoughts based on an unrepresentative sample.

We have first-gen friend who has gone on about immigrants to Italy. I am sure that is happening, as climate change and political unrest make staying put untenable. Migration is a fact of life, and political boundaries are arbitrary anyway. What white Americans in this country conveniently forget is that they were immigrants too, and many were "illegal".

What I saw in Italy was a very homogenous white country, even in Rome. Again, we were tourists and we were in mostly tourist areas. The Italians I saw during the bike portion of the tour, hosts, laborers, people on the street, were all white. I saw ONE dark-skinned person at the lunch stop on day six and I am pretty sure he was a laborer. And there were some darker-skinned people running street shops in Florence and in Rome and hawking cheap things at the tourist attractions. But all the people running brick-and-mortar shops, tour guides, transport workers, shoppers, people in restaurants, people out and about, as I remember it, were all white.

This certainly says something about stratification, and stratification is also closely correlated with race. We didn't see the slums. On our trip to Croatia, we stayed in a hotel in Split far away from the touristy waterfront and it was tough and gritty. It didn't encourage you to go out. But we were there to be in a good place to catch a flight the next day so it didn't really matter.

There were two dark-skinned men on the tour to Cinque Terre. I didn't have a chance to chat with them. There was a single dark-skinned man at breakfast in our hotel in Florence. I did get a chance to chat with him long enough to find out that he was not a cyclist. He was wearing a t-shirt for a charity run, so chances are he was at least middle class.

That was pretty much it. Everyone of our bike tour was white except me. All of our many tour guides were white. All our transport and hotel workers were white. All of the people on all of our flights were white. We had one dark-skinned flight attendant. I don't remember seeing people of color in the airports but my mental images are of white people.

This doesn't add up to much, but I had one experience at the Rome airport that left me with a bad taste of Italy.

We decided to get some food since we had time before our flight. We scouted the food court and looked for likely options. I found one that had a plate of grilled vegetables and a lot of the airline crew went there so we figured that was a good sign.

There seemed to be a starting place, so I stood there with 10 Euros in my hand. At least a half dozen airline crew members walked up behind me and the woman behind the counter ignored me and served them. After about a dozen of them got got what they wanted, it was pretty clear I was not going to get served.

I went to a second shop and stood under the "place order here" sign. I was the only one there. There was long line at the "pick up order here" sign. When it became clear that no one was going to come over to take my order, I gave up.

At neither place, was I ignoring posted directions. No one told me I was doing it wrong. Maybe they were too busy to point me in the right direction. Maybe they treat everybody badly. But I don't think it was a coincidence that I was the only person at either shop who was not white, or at the first place, who was not also speaking Italian.

This experience reminded me of the Jim Crow laws that lead to the civil rights lunch counter demonstrations, except I didn't get beaten up or spit on. Still, it is no less painful to be invisible, that you are just not there, or people don't want to do business with you.

This is just a very small sliver of my lived experience. I am not BIPOC in the United States where the long history of explicit and implicit discrimination is much more dramatic and touches lives in deeper and more profound ways. But it's not a micro-aggression either.

I come from privilege and I never forget that. But social class privilege does not eliminate the possibility that people will treat you badly because you look different. It is too bad that this is what I will remember of my last day in Italy.

Day 11: 6/18/22

Going home. Loooog Travel Day! Little did we know how long! Uneventful travel is always aspirational but not often realized.

We left the Rome hotel in a ride arranged by VBT. It was the nicest van of the trip. 

We each got our own row.

Our departure time from the hotel was three hours in advance of our flight. We have to assume that VBT knows enough about the location of the hotel and how long it would take to get to the airport. That turned out to be right and we arrived in plenty of time to get to the gate. 

I guess I am spoiled living in Syracuse where it takes 15-20 minutes, because we threaded through neighborhoods and two-lane streets, lots of traffic, stop signs, and traffic lights before getting to a high-speed road. It probably took about 45 minutes, not an unreasonable amount of travel time considering that Rome is a major city. But it still made me nervous.

The Rome airport is a temple to gods of capitalism. In order to get to the gates, you have to pass through a  shopping center where there is no direct route to pass through.

They are apparently successful in getting people to finish spending their remaining Euros because there was a huge bank of registers as you enter the concourse. 

And then, like any other airport, the concourses are lined by shops. It's a shopping mall with video displays.

The flight to Newark was completely full and getting people, luggage, and food on the plane took a while. We were slightly delayed, but we weren’t worried because we had a four hour lay-over in Newark.

The fight itself was pretty uneventful. Passing through customs and passport control went smoothly. It was only after got ready to head to our gate that we were informed that our flight to Syracuse had been canceled. Since I was the last one to get through TSA, Mike and Walter researched options and there were no more flight options that day. So rather than spend the night in an airport hotel, we rented a car and drove home.

We got home around 11:00EDT, about the same time if we were able to take our original flight. It's always easier traveling west than east, so we were tired but not tired like arriving in Europe to three hours of sleep. I was happy to get up at 5:00EDT since my body thought it was 11:00am. There are many other body functions that need to get back on regular schedule again, but I'll leave that one there.

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Day10 (VBT Day 7): 6/17/22

The task for the day was a long bus ride (three hours) from the hotel to Rome. We had a smaller bus and female driver.

Here's pool in the morning.

This restaurant had vegan croissants. How do you make a croissant without butter? They were very good, so I don't think I want to know.

We were on or near the coast for most of the trip and the drive back paralleled the coast, so on occasion, we could see the Mediterranean.

Our tour guides hauled our luggage to the spot where the bus could park (I thought the hotel staff would do that but Micole said, no, they do it most of the time.) I wasn’t able to find them at a moment when I could give them envelopes I had prepared with tips, so this was the moment. 

We had conversations over the past few days about tips. The VBT materials suggest that tips are discretionary but at one rest stop, one of the guides was talking about a previous VBT trip where they only had five guests. While that might have been good for the guests it meant that the tour guides would only get five tips. All the work is pretty much the same except they have to prep fewer bikes, so that meant they would only one third of the income that would earn on this trip. It would be helpful of the VBT materials were more transparent about how the industry pays its workers. The model is more like food service work in the US than food service in Europe.

I woke up when the bus hit stop-and-go traffic. Arriving in Rome was a bit of a shock to the system. The bus had to triple-park a block away from the entrance to the hotel. 

They had to call a VBT person who was waiting at the hotel to come and get us because we would never have found it on our own..

Here is the front of Hotel dei Mellini. There was no marquee or drive-up, so it was easy to miss.

Small, unpretentious, and nothing is square.

There was chaos in the lobby. Another tour group arrived at the same time, so they whisked to a conference room to meet with our VBT contact in Rome. She was an American who came to Italy for study abroad, married an Italian, and now lives in Rome.

We walked to a restaurant that she recommended and got a sense of urban Italian life. It was much as I remember Rome in 1960-something: sunny, hot, chaotic, and dirty.

Were the garbage workers on strike?

There was a restaurant with outdoor seating right next to this scene. When we walked by later, it was mostly cleaned up.

Lots of street vendors on side streets.

Also lots of homeless people.

And, creative?

The traffic was heavy and made more chaotic by the fact that there were a lot of motorcycles, mopeds, delivery people on ebikes, escooters, and commuter cyclists.

Here they are lined up at the start line. 

And they're off!

We hired a guide for a walking tour. We really like hearing something about what we're seeing as well as walking purposefully instead of wandering aimlessly.

We asked the VBT contact to ask the tour guide if she do it a little earlier and she agreed, although it meant a little more contortion since she came by bus, and there was a bus strike going on.

Daniella from Johannesburg. Also in the picture were Kathleen and Mark from California by way of Wales. They were strong riders (translation: they could almost keep up with us).

She walked us by the residence of the Spanish ambassador and the French Embassy. There were this retractable barriers like you'd see in DC and James Bond movies. I liked these because they lit up.

Next to the French Embassy was the church of St. Luigi de Francesi, much larger than the churches in the little towns.

Since admission to the church was free, they made some money by charging for lights on the artwork.

This is what it looked like when the lights were on. I should have taken a picture when they were off.

Our first touristy attraction was the Pantheon.

Here's the line to get in. Like most of Rome, it was chaotic and free-form rather than an orderly queue.

When I turned around after taking this picture. The group was nowhere to be seen. I walked up one street looking for Mike or Walter's hats, but no luck. I walked back to the Pantheon and tried another street that seemed likely, but again, no luck. I walked back to the Pantheon and waited about 10 minutes and figured this was not going to be a no-drop ride. I found my way back to the hotel so unfortunately, I don't have anything else to add about the tour.

The five of them ended up pretty far from the hotel by the end of the tour, and they picked a restaurant with outdoor seating. The hotel called me a cab and I met them there. This is only noteworthy because it was obvious that travel was much slower on four wheels than two.

Here's the restaurant.

 And here is what it looks like when a car comes down the street. If your elbow was out while you're eating, you could take off someone's mirror.

Cars like this make sense.

Small cars, small gas stations.

We used the river to navigate our walk back to the hotel, We crossed the Tiber river and these guys were playing Coldplay.

Here's the last monument for the blog, Castel Samt'Angelo, 

Day 8 (VBT Day 5): 6/15/22

At today's briefing, the guides told us that today was the hardest day. I could have sworn that they said that the first day was going to be the hardest day. Doesn't matter: they have all been hard - unless you have an ebike.

There were more riders on ebikes on this trip than any other, probably about half. There was one family of six, all on ebikes.

Here's one of the step-through ebikes.

After packing for our transfer, we headed out along the same road past the amusement park to climb to Castagneto Carducci again. It definitely helps to do a route for the second time so we knew what to expect.

But this was only the first of three climbs for the day. 

We left Catagneto Carducci and climbed to Sarsetta, which was noteworthy only in that we passed through the town in the blink of an eye and then began a long sweeping descent into Suvereto where we had lunch.

Somewhere along the way, the van parked by a spring and we refilled our water bottles. 

There were also three kids at the spring. They were wearing matching kits and looked to me to be about 15. A few minutes later a team car pulled up with matching logos and and middle-aged guy got out of the car and started yelling at them. I wish I had taken a few pictures of the scene, maybe behind him so he wouldn't punch me out. Allesandra said he was saying things like: "You have to push harder! What to you think this is? A weekend ride?" The kids never said a word. It didn't look like anyone was having much fun.

Like a lot of these small towns, Suvereto had a gate at the main entrance.

Here's Stu on main street.

Here's a view of the town before arriving.

Like a lot of these little towns, there was more than one church. This one was particularly ornate.

For context, notice that there are only about a half dozen pews.

We walked around a little before settling on a place for lunch and walked some more after eating.

On the third climb, we passed an abandoned house with some amazing stone work.

If you look behind the fence in this next picture, you can see a stone-lined ditch, I assume for water.

Stopping for these pictures also gave me an excuse for being the last one up the hill.

The ride ended at our last hotel on the biking portion of the trip, Calidario Terme Etrusche in Venturina Terme. 

 

Chinese-Jewish laundry ruining the neighborhood.

This hotel also had a spa and VBT had arranged for us to use it at no additional cost. We had silicone bracelets that had a transponder embedded in it so we needed it to get in. We had a two-hour window (4:00-6:00) when they worked. It probably also gave them the opportunity to collect usage data. 

Here's the outdoor pool.

Here's space pod, just like the ones they used to have at the Syracuse airport, that you had to pass through to get into the indoor part. That's Stu going through

Past the pod was a reception desk and beyond a hallway into the pool.

The music and incense made it very New Age-y.

We did get shhhd while we in there, but just to be sure you can relax, you can go to a  "silent room".

VBT arranged for a couple of vans to drive to a seaside town of Piombino for dinner. We rode in the VBT van with Alessandro. 

Here's the view from the breakwater.

We settled on a restaurant by the water.

Mara and Irwin joined us.

Later.

Here's the view on the breakwater after dinner.

Morning stats: https://www.strava.com/activities/7312684379

Afternoon stats: https://www.strava.com/activities/7312684576