Visitng Ferrara

 Monday Sep 23rd

Monday was our second day along the Po and the path became a little more interesting. Leading us to the city of Ferrara, just a little south of the Po, were a series of tree-lined pathways along small canals and rich farmland.

Canal pathway 

By lunchtime we had reached the city of Ferrara. This city has a blend of Medieval  and Renaissance architecture. It was the seat of the powerful Este family who governed here for three centuries, and today it is a UNESCO site. We enjoyed a pasta lunch in one of its attractive Piazzas. The wonderful thing about many of these cities is that it is a joy to cycle around the historical centres as they're completely pedestrianised. That was the case here. You just have to watch out for the crazy, speedy e-bikers!

Cycling into the historic city of Ferrara

Statue of Niccolo 111 d'Este, one of the Dukes of the ruling family

Taking a break by the Castello Estense di Ferrara, complete with moat

He looks like a happy cycle-tourist

We fought a strong headwind all afternoon so we had to work for the last half of our 54 km today. The day ended with a nice little hotel in a small village on the north side of the Po.

Chilling out in our hotel room with dinner on the bed

Hotel Enjoy, Polesella. They locked our bikes up in a garage for us


Spider shaped bread we had at lunch in Ferrara. Apparently you only find it in Ferrara and it's called Coppia Ferrarese. Who knew!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Big Plans Ahead! Another European Bike Tour

Image
 The count-down is on for our next cycle tour! On Sat Aug 24th (that is tomorrow!) we leave for yet another cycle tour in Europe. This one will see us flying to Frankfurt and riding from there south towards the Alps via Bavaria, a little part of the west of Austria (Tyrol) and on into Italy, eventually ending up in Venice. Lots of similarities to our last tour two years ago, but quite a different route. We have set aside six weeks for this journey. The main goal of this tour is to cycle a route called the Via Claudia Augusta . This route starts in Donauworth, Germany (located on the River Danube) and ends either in Venice or at the Po River south of Verona (depending which fork of the road you take). The attraction here is that it follows an old Roman road that once connected the northern part of the Empire via the River Danube, with the Adriatic Sea via the River Po or the Venetian lagoon. So there's lots of history attached to it, and it takes you through a lot of beautiful scene...
Read more

We reached the Danube!

Image
  Yesterday's ride on the last day of August will be memorable because of the village we reached halfway through the day, called Harburg. Here an impressive castle sits atop the hill, this one dating from the 11-12 th century, and said to be one of Germany's oldest castle fortifications. Hamburg and its hilltop castle We didn't climb up to the castle (these hilltop establishments are oft best viewed from afar in our opinion, especially when you're on a heavily loaded bike). Instead we stumbled on a delightful little café on the old stone bridge over the slow-moving Wornitz River where we had coffee and the most delicious pieces of homemade cake. We had quite the chat with the owners who seemed quite surprised to have Canadians on bikes in their place. Our large pieces of apple cake and plum cake Chilling in the heat of the day   Anyway the eating was followed by a good hour just relaxing in the shade under the trees along the river, resting up before hitting the ...
Read more

Complications at Reschen Pass: Italy here we come!

Image
 Monday morning Sep 9th Pfunds, at the foot of Reschen Pass, the route to Italy Before leaving home, I had read about a road closure here at Pfunds that would affect the main road, causing the diversion for traffic to use the minor road up the pass that is the official Via Claudia route for bikes. So it sounded like our bike route would not be affected, although it might have a lot of traffic. However, at breakfast this morning we learned that it's actually the cycling road that is completely closed for the building of a rockfall shed, effective Sep 1st. There is apparently an alternative signed diversion for bikes that follows a really rough gravel path. Not the best for heavily loaded bikes, although we did it over Fern Pass in good weather. Fortunately, there is a Via Claudia bike shuttle service, and we've just secured ourselves 3 spots at 12.00. This will save us a ton of hard, unpleasant riding in damp weather up the pass, and get us to the town of Nauders, several km bel...
Read more