Goodbye Croatia and Hello Italy - Hills to the City of the Infinite

​Our final day in Croatia feels kind of like being a homeless person. We had to check out of our lodging and wait around till the 8 pm departure that night.  It was a long day and rainy and cool to boot.  Here is the Marco Polo, our ship to take us from Split to Ancona Italy.  

It is a joy to hear Italian voices as the passengers start to queue up. There was even a slew of Italian motorcyclists waiting and there was a lot of friendly trash talk happening most of which I couldn’t follow but it wasn’t hard to get the gist! 

Finally we get aboard a couple of hours before departure time.  This is a very old ship and it doesn’t appear to have had any aesthetic upgrades. We are talking retro here.  I even read that it had gone aground on one of the islands in the early 2000’s and there was some debate whether it would even be repaired and returned to the fleet.   They did repair it and here it is. 

However it is rather cool and certainly functional.  You might say, this is our first cruise!  Ha!  This is no cruise ship but I have to say I had the best night’s sleep of our whole trip on this ship!  

We arrive in Ancona after the eleven hour crossing at 7am sharp. We are ready to start our ride for the day. 

Our first stop is at a bar right up the road from the port. It is nice to experience the familiar cafe culture of Italy once again. 

We head out of the city and another less pleasant familiarity strikes.  I forgot how steep the hills are in Marche but the scenery makes up for much of it.  I find myself pushing my bike in the first couple of miles out the gate! 

We pass through beautiful cultivated fields and some nice towns and make another stop to refuel in Osimo.  

We are getting ready to leave town and a sole mountain bike rider approaches to talk with us.  He wants to know what we are doing and takes it upon himself to show us a bit of his town. He leaves us and we are starting off and he returns as he forgot to tell us to go to the garden and the viewpoint and we follow him there.  It was a spectacular view point that we would have missed without his guidance.  What a nice and generous young man. 

The view of the Marche hills. They are much steeper than they may look !

Onward through more loveliness and much more steepness! 

Steep or steeper junction. We chose steeper. 

And did I mention hills?

We arrive in Recanati and our data tells us we climbed over 4000 feet in our short 25 mile ride.  This makes me feel better about myself and better about the swear words or two that may or may not have slipped from my lips.  It was a tough day for me.  There was many a pitch between 15 and 25 percent.  

The town is quite elegant and all about Leopardi, a very famous Italian poet. Here is his statue on the main piazza 

The town is called the city of the infinite because of one of his famous poems.  Here is a link if you are interested. It is very beautiful.  

http://www.solearabiantree.net/namingofparts/infinite.php

That night we had an interesting interaction.  We bought a couple of pizzas and when we paid, he gave us way too much change.  The bill was about 22 euros. I gave him two twenties and he gave me back almost as much money as I gave him.  We told him that wasn’t right and gave him the right amount of money back. He said he wasn’t good at math and was skeptical that we were getting shortchanged.  We insisted he keep the money we owed him but as we were walking out the door he said wait and gave us a loaf of bread fresh out of the oven.  He may have been bad at math but he was really excellent at pizza and bread.