Il Duomo

Finishing up on last night with our trip to Pisa…and yes, whoever took the bet won! Paul and Richard S hadn’t been before so now feel truly enlightened and as if their experience set has been truly broadened! Dinner was excellent on a cute little terrace with vines growing everywhere. A few of us had the “Crunchy egg yolk with asparagus and truffle cream plus truffle shavings), which sounded much better in Italian! The egg yolk was remarkable…lightly breaded then, presumably, flash deep-fried so the center was still runny and the outside crunchy! Main, for me, was pork tenderloin medallions in a porcini sauce with crunchy mushroom slices and veggie medley. The 2016 Gualmare Morellino di Scansano (coastal Tuscany) was only 22 Euros, so we may have had a few to celebrate the long ride!

Nice ride today - very straightforward with just one very steep hill that hit 18%. Beautiful Tuscan countryside and a thoroughly hair-raising ride through Florence to our apartment. Remarkable little to report otherwise from the ride itself aside from Paul cleverly engineering a lunch stop by having what my French friends call a “brutal coincidence” with the pavement…though not really that brutal! And, BTW, we are reliably informed that his Burberry arm protectors are actually old horse-riding socks that have had the feet cut off - that has way more street cred! As you can see, we also upgraded our support vehicle (haha!).

Got to Firenze by 3pm, so off to visit the sights before posting this!

Data for today: 54 miles (86km), 2,228 feet of elevation (675m). Cumulative: 393 miles (629km), 23,785 feet of elevation (7,208m).