San Gimignano to Volterra

Unfortunately, Tuesday (my birthday!) did not exactly go as planned. We missed our first turn and found ourselves at the bottom of the wrong mountain with no way to go but up. I would not recommend our route to even the most avid cyclist, but it did offer some amazing views, and eventually we made it to our lovely farmstay (pictured above) just below the town of Volterra. 

We woke up Tuesday morning in Casa Aladina, our guesthouse near the city center in San Gimignano. With a scheduled shorter (2/2.5 hour) ride ahead of us for the day, we took our time with breakfast (cappuccinos and chocolate crossaints at Cafe Giardino) and getting our stuff together, and rolled out of town at about 10:30am. 

That's more-or-less when things went awry. We planned to take the 'scenic route' to Volterra, and we knew the directions said to ignore two left turns to Volterra but take one. We mixed up the order of operations, mistakenly ignoring the first one. By the time we realized our error, we had come down a pretty steep hill that I had no interest in climbing back up. The next ~5 hours were an exercise in constant climbing, wayfinding with Google Maps... and patience. In hindsight, retracing our steps to get back on track as soon as we knew we were off course would have been the better call. Lesson learned! With the exception of a few funky-smelling industrial areas, the landscape was beautiful. And, the weather was gorgeous. Not too many pictures were snapped during the ride or at our one pit stop for the day (cokes, ice cream, potato chips and Nutella-filled candy bars at a convenience store).

This downhill glide was fun while it lasted.  

See San Gimignano? See Volterra? See all the green? See the road that juts out from San Gimignano at 10 o'clock that doesn't go through the green? That's the way we meant to go... 

Here we are at the bottom of our glide, blissfully unaware.  

We climbed the mountain in the background.  

After about six hours of riding with only one real stop (if you don't count the time we pushed our bikes up a 10% grade for 20 minutes then I fell over and sat on the side of the road sobbing), we finally made it to Agriturismo Podere San Lorenzo, our one "fancy" place of the trip, and the only place we booked ahead of time. Although we didn't get to enjoy it as much as we hoped, the villa and grounds were stunning, and we did get to relax on our patio and participate in a cooking class where we learned to make fresh pasta — then had it for dinner that night! 

Despite the setbacks, this was an unbelievably great birthday. And even with a few frustrated snaps at each other along the way, I'm so glad David and I are doing this together. We make a pretty good team. :)

Bike Route: 32.3 miles // 2,788 ft of elevation gain.  https://www.strava.com/activities/989541042