tuscany 2022: 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.