3,987km down: 2,238km to go
I woke up in plenty of time to get ready and use the Wifi – or so I thought. First of all the lift was not working, it was showing on the control panel that it was on the 7th floor – um there is no 7th floor. Getting bags down from 4th floor was a bit of shambles with all the other riders also dragging their stuff down the fairly narrow steps. Then once again there was no Wifi.
The hotel had opened the restaurant early for us but I am not sure if anyone had told the waiter, he got quite stressed, at one stage when I went out to use the toilet I saw him wringing his hands and talking loudly to himself.
The convoy went well but it went for about 14k instead of 10k. A few kilometres after we got out of the convoy we started coming across these amazing beaches and towns, it was like miles and miles of Oriental Parade but with sun umbrellas and deck chairs. It was quite quiet to start off with as it was Sunday, but it certainly got busier later on. It seemed the whole world was heading to the beach!
Beaches on the way from Genoa
As I had not been able to use Wifi at the hotel I was looking for an Internet cafe to send emails. Then I saw a McDonalds sign and thought “Yes, they have Wifi”. We followed the signs to McDonalds and found it in the mall, but unfortunately unless you have an Italian sim card you can’t use the McDonalds Wifi. So I was still unable to send any emails or blog posts.
Outside of McDonalds with Esther, unable to get Wifi
We stopped at a cafe and had amazing pastries, and finally some drinkable coffee (so long as I remember to ask for no chocolate in it).The lunch truck had problems finding somewhere to park for lunch where we would be able to see it. Geergo did a great job, he had lines of orange tape plus safety vests hanging up, I saw it 2k away from a tunnel.
Taken from the Tour d’Afrique blog
It was really hot today again, not a cloud in the sky, the temperature was up to about 40 again. One thing I noted is all the Italians are so brown! It must be amazing to be able to rely on endless sunshine, little wind and blue, blue sea.
We stopped at the beach before going to the camp and had a cold drink and just sat for awhile watching people. The bar lady asked us about our bike numbers (it has the rider number and St Petersburg to Lisbon on it), she was so impressed that we had ridden thus far that she bought us out some food.
Beach we stopped at for a cold drink
We got to the camp and yay there is a pool, but unbelievable the pool shuts at 6:30pm and opens at 9:30am. By the time we had had dinner, put up our tents and walked up to the pool there was no one in it. As we can’t read Italian we did not see the closing hours that were on the sign, although I have to say we suspected something. But we dived in quickly and managed to get a three minute swim before we got chucked out. At least we got cool.
The camp site is the site of an old olive orchard, and the surface is really stony. It was quite a mission getting tent pegs in without them bending, plus if you move off the squab you are lying on rocks.
One again we have squat toilets and no toilet paper! Tonight there were no noisy Italians but a concert that went on to about midnight. But at least there was Wifi so I stayed up catching up on the blog for a bit. Tomorrow we ride into Cannes, with another rest day the next day, after only two riding days, so I will be able to catch up on sleep days!
Geergo joined us at the campsite up at the reception where we were catching up with our emails. We were talking about how one beer never seems to be enough, you need two and he told us a Hungarian saying:
1 beer is not enough
Having 2 beers is like having 1/2 a beer
Having 4 beers is like having 1 beer
1 beer is not enough.
Kaye's Awesome Adventures 