After some careful weather checks, it looked like it was going to rain most of the day so we asked the hotel owner if he knew someone that would drive us to Vasto! No problem! In an hour we had our driver and by 11:30 we were making the left turn on to the last road into Vasto. Down we went into this steep ravine then up, up, up, up (that's 4 ups!) .. and presto we were at our hotel in Vasto! We decided tomorrow's ride would avoid that road!
Vasto is very nice place and when we arrived they were just finishing a 9km running event in the main piazza. Lots of people milling around!
We decided to look for a nice place for a mid day meal and found an out-of-the-way restaurant. Harold had a marvelous seafood salad and seafood pasta plate .. Marion stuck to an equally excellent salad and pasta dish.
After an afternoon snooze (well, we have been cycling alot!), we went out on the town and wandered the streets with hundreds of locals enjoying the light displays in the piazza's .. all closed to traffic.
Today we cycled off on our planned 56km loop avoiding yesterday's steep road only to find we had selected a 'white' road that was just as steep .. but with only the odd dog sleeping on the side of the road .. so it was a quiet road when we had to resort to walking the bikes up the last 900m of 20%!
After a few not as steep ups and downs we finally settled into some fine riding along more rural roads with very little traffic and easy grades with fine views across the wide valleys. Lots of tractors out today taking grapes to the wineries .. some of which seem like very big operations with huge stainless steel tanks.
We had some fabulous views of the sea from our lunch spot and picked the right road back into town avoiding the steep ravine and ending up back on a piazza with a sunny view of the sea!
