A sandwich day

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Geo: 43.7224, 11.7673

This day was a sandwich. A great beginning, a great ending, with kind of a mishmash in between.

We woke up in a room that reminded us "Hey -- we're in a castle!" That was pretty great.
We took some time before breakfast to just walk around the property, and see what we couldn't really see the night before. And that was a fantastic grounds, with delightful little nooks and paths everywhere you looked. And the birds -- oh, the birds! You've never heard so much joyful-sounding singing.

I took some time to blog from a table overlooking the Perugia valley, before we went in to breakfast. What a view!

We made our way to Foligno, the start city for Stage 10 of the Gro d''Italia, and our first stage. We'd splurged a little on tickets to the start village for this day, thinking that this might be a good opportunity to have Gnorm meet some riders as they signed in.

A parking spot was found pretty quickly, and we grabbed our bikes and headed into town to pick up our passes.

.....and then we had the sandwich filling.

Our confirmation email said to pick up our passes at the Club Giro desk, just outside the Michelangelo hospitality area. Cool. No problem.

We found a hospitality area, but saw nowhere to pick up the passes. I asked someone, and they pointed me down a street, so off we went.
We landed at the sponsorship village, which would have been fun and all, but it's not what we needed.
Back to that hospitality area, surely someone around there knows.
The fellow doing security for the area didn't know, but someone else looked at our paper, and said yes, 200 meters that way. Toward the sponsorship area. Sigh.
Back over there. No, I still don't see where we're meant to go. Ask someone else, and they point us a little further still, so we give it a shot.

A trailer that looked pretty official was spotted, and hope resurged. The girl inside looked us up on her computer, and saw that yes, we were confirmed, but no this wasn't the right place. You need to go to the Michelangelo area. (Insert eye roll here)

In the span of about 2 hours, we visited each of these locations 2 to 3 times, asked no fewer than 2 dozen people where the Michelangelo area or the Club Giro desk was, and nearly walked away from each other a couple of times.

On the 2nd visit to the official trailer, I must have looked sufficiently Over This, as the girl called our contact, who talked to me a bit ("Where are you? I'll come out to you"😉, and then talked to the official gal, who arranged for a sponsor rep to walk us over there.

It turns out that this Michelangelo area was in an area that would have been pretty simple to get to, had there only been signs above the crowd. But we had no chance at seeing the signs at waist level. Ugh.

When we finally met the gal who would walk us in there, another couple was imploring her for help as well, and she brought them in with us. They were from Colorado too, and had an equally challenging time finding their assigned area.

But hey, we're in, so it;s all good! Grab me a little sandwich and a water, and let's watch the riders.

Or.......just grab me a packet of pretzels and a pre-wrapped chunk of Parmesan, and we'll call it good.

That was perhaps the least "VIP" feeling experience we've had yet. You can tel it;s a different organization than the Tour, or the USA Pro Challenge.

We spent about an hour there, and just weren't feeling like we were getting our money's worth, so we cut our losses and boogied.

Our target was a hotel in Arezzo, which was a nice midway point, that wouldn't take us forever to get to, nor from.

We navigated right to it, and then......didn't find a reception desk. The door that would logically be the right place was locked, and peering in, we saw a drum kit and other stuff that looked like it was in someone's living room.
None of the other doors proved any more welcoming, and a phone call to the number just went to voicemail.

Huh.

Seeing as how this was pre-paid, that was irritating, but our bigger concern was finding a place to sleep for the night.

Enter TripAdvisor and Expedia apps.

Normally, I like to advise people to use their travel agents -- you pay the same price (or less), and your agent gets a little benefit.

But when you ARE a travel agent, and you need last-minute help.....you go to the Expedia for agents app, and use TripAdvisor to help narrow down the list.

A place was picked, and the online booking failed, but we headed that way anyway, and figured we'd just book a room on the spot.

It worked.

Whew!

The town was Poppi, and our hotel (or rather, albergo) was up in the hill town, just beneath the castle. The receptionist couldn't have been lovelier, and she made a recommendation for dinner which turned out to be nice as well.

The restaurant was just across the plaza from the castle. We passed a group of about 20 schoolkids (maybe 8 years old or so), who were just settling in to some benches in the courtyard of this restaurant -- apparently for some singing. So we had a little background music for our dinner. Then later, they all came in for dinner in the back room of this place, so we didn't have that awkward silence where you just hear the sounds of everyone eating. 😊

All in all, the day started and ended on high notes, so it was just the middle that hit a sour chord or two.

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Photos

The requisite knight in armor
...just like you expect.

Library
Straight out of a Disney movie

The time trial start house
This is the sort of view a VIP ticket gets you.....once you figure out where to pick it up.