September 18, 2023
Day 12: Rest day in Verona
Hot town, summer in the city
The autumnal equinox lands on September 23, Saturday. The weather keeps vacillating between muggy summerness and soft sprinkly coolness. Anyway, I only had a few more days to use today's soundtrack. I'm trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Ever since I committed myself to choosing a soundtrack every day, it feels somewhat forced. So maybe I should stop. I'd much rather use ra-ra-Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen, which is playing over the campground bar loudspeakers as I type this, but I can't imagine any thematic context for it. When I search for a tune to match the day's mood, more often than not, my mental jukebox consists only of the contents of greatest hits compilation albums that were hawked by Dick Clark knockoffs on late-night TV. Through these ads, I learned the hooks, and only the hooks, of most popular tunes of the 60s and 70s. I should take a lesson from yesterday by tapping into the American folk and folk revival repertoire. Lots of songs about traveling and freedom.
I feel this vibe here at the campground, which is inexplicably populated almost exclusively by Germans. Traveling by foot or bicycle or train or motorcycle or caravan, people young and old -- but mostly young -- are living life to the fullest by going where they want when they want. And so are we! How cool is that?
To that end, I briefly considered reverting to a riff on my original plan of riding from Milan to Split, Croatia. Then I thought of heading up into the Alps for a bit. Then I thought better of both of these ideas, realizing that our legs may not be up to the mountain riding involved in each of these routes. We will likely have to shed gear and train more before taking on anything so ambitious.
I did spend some time today figuring out how we'd get to Venice, and where we'd stay. I think we're going to encounter some weather while in Venice, but that won't deter us from camping. My motto at the moment is camp camp camp until we can camp no more. This strategy worked pretty well in France until the mornings started getting frosty.
Speaking of camping, I owe our dear readers a mini-tour of this incredible campground, literally located on the grounds of Castel San Pietro.
We were tourists for a few hours, which was a lot of fun. It became more and more crowded as we walked south and as time wore on. We wanted to finish up before we got too tired -- this was supposed to be a rest day, after all -- and before the rain started. And the rain did indeed come! We timed it perfectly.
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The arena is closed on Mondays, but we had a good look at it and then called it a day. Someone advised us not to bother with Verona unless you wanted to buy into the whole "Romeo and Juliet were real people" fantasy that's perpetrated by the tourist industry here. It's a beautiful place even without all that fluff. It's definitely worth a visit.
Tomorrow, it's off to Vincenza, or more accurately, a campground on the outskirts. However, we will ride through the city. I hope to be surprised by it in the same way Verona pleasantly caught us off guard.
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