Down Into the Land of the Picini and the Rossini Homeland - Parnesi to Ascoli Piceno

​We leave another wonderful Italian immersion experience at Ana and Nino’s to head towards the region of Le Marche and the city of Ascoli Piceno.  We have a leisurely morning as we know this will be the easiest day of the whole trip. 25 miles or so mostly downhill.  

Most of the beginning of the ride was through lush forest, almost jungle like- encroaching into the road way at times. We got a chuckle out of one spot where you could see the speed limit change four times!   We were definitely exceeding and it was a mystery why one had to slow down here anyway!  


We enter into Le Marche and we are still in deep woods. We pass a reservoir with an interesting dam which brought out the engineer in Doug. 




Then onward.  Shortly before we get to Ascoli Piceno we take a small detour to visit a nicely restored medieval town.  


As we push our bikes up the steep road, we pass on elderly couple.  I am in front and say, buongiorno.  No reaction from the woman.  Then she spots Doug behind me and goes all Gaga over him.  Chatting and smiling.  Another case of bel uomo I believe.  

Then we ride the last couple miles into the city.  It is a bit of a shell shock for us all I think after being in the remote places we have been for the last couple of weeks.  This city is ancient.  It was a major city of the Picenes several centuries before Rome was much of a thing.  It is built entirely of travertine.  Most other big cities of wealth simply build with rock and then do the facades in travertine.  This place is solid travertine.   So when Rome eventually destroyed the Picenes here they basically recycled all of the travertine in the original  buildings and built their “new” stuff with that.  You can see the antiquity especially on the main piazzas.  






We are staying two nights here so the following day the choices are to do a big bike circle hitting a few very lovely Le Marche towns or hang out here.  My three companions head out for a day of biking. I stay behind to do some site seeing and to do some shopping to cook us a meal tonight.  

I walked up to this very cool temple this morning. 


We once again had difficulty finding lodging. We had to split up.  Doug and Shawn got the only Airbnb apartment available which is where the home cooking is happening and Jim and I got the only other thing we could find which is an elegant old hotel.  Here is Jim in the doorway and also here is the view above our bed!  Sweet dreams. 



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