Italy!

It was already quite warm when we hit the road this morning, but zooming down the hill from the campground revived us. Villach is a lovely town, and we took a few minutes to cruise around the old center and get some treats at a bakery before picking up where we left off on the Alpe-Adria path.

Much of the 23-mile ride today was shady, which was incredibly helpful. We rode along the Gail River for a while, headed upstream, before veering southwest over rolling hills. Dazzling new mountains came into view. 

There were an astonishing number of cyclists today. It really was incredible. There were dozens at the Spar grocery store where we stopped for cold drinks. 

And whole tour groups on bikes:

Shortly after crossing into Italy, we flagged down a cyclist to take our picture. He turned out to be British, and recently retired from his job at a school. As his retirement project he was riding his bike to their sister school in Montenegro. He seemed like a really lovely person and it would be fun to run into him again. 

Here's the photo he took:

It's really fun to be in this little corner of Italy. The Slovenian mountains loom to the east. Austria is just a few miles to the north.

I appreciated this garden on our evening stroll:

And BEST of all, we're in a hotel tonight (no campgrounds in the area). We checked in around 1:30 and literally have been overjoyed to spend the afternoon feeling clean and cool and lounging on beds. We even have clean clothes, thanks to a washing machine and dryer at last night's funky campground. We haven't slept in real beds for ten days.

We walked across the street to sample the local pizza for dinner. Ruby's pizza came with a mystery food on it, which we finally determined to be pickled radiccio. She was not impressed. The adventure continues!

- Liv