Leaving Finale Soon

Miles from Home - 5362.7
Firsts / Highlights - Stayed warm & dry, unlike much of Italy and Switzerland
Miles Ridden - 39.15 miles
Vertical Feet - 4,209 ft.
Route - View Today’s Route Here
People - Lorenzo – Manager of Hotel Florenz.

This post is from June 26, 2009.



The common tread of all the Bike Hotels is that the owner / manager is actively involved with the guests. The services provided from one hotel to the next are not identical, but so far, I personally know the owner of every one where I have stayed.

Lorenzo is the manger of Hotel Florenz in Finale Ligure. He has helped me build routes in my GPS each day to be sure I find the best roads in the area. The landscape here is a series of parallel valleys all flaring open at the Mediterranean to the south. Ridges rise as much as 3,000 feet at the top of each of these valleys as you head inland toward the Alps. The way you plan a ride around here is to ride along the shore until you get to the valley you want to climb. You then ride into that valley and cross over as many ridges as you care to tackle riding parallel to the sea. Some of the valleys have exposed rock cliffs and some have beautiful beach wood forests. Lorenzo helped me find a good combination.

When it started to look like there might be rain inland, he built a route for me that climbed the ridges closest to the sea. It’s good to have a local expert available.

My reason to spend a few days in Finale was to avoid bad weather that seemed to be everywhere else. As the train pulled out to begin my trip to Switzerland, the umbrella that had protected me was lifted and it started to rain. I am now officially out of safe-havens from the weather. I am going to have to take whatever hits me, and I’m afraid Switzerland knows I’m coming.

This is going to be a fairly condensed trip to Switzerland. First, everything seems to be much more expensive there, starting with lodging. Second, I want to be back down to the Riviera in Monaco for the first stage of Le Tour de France on July 4.

I have another logistical house of cards building. I am leaving my bike & box in Finale while I go to Zermatt and Interlaken. I then return to Finale just long enough to get my bike, but leave the box while I go to Monaco. This will create a very long day of travel, but it allows me to have my bike and hopefully ride the time trial course in Monaco before the race. After I see off the racers on stage 2 of the Tour, I return to Finale and pack my bike into the box before spending one last night at the convent. What happens next depends on the weather forecast. I will either go back to Switzerland on Lake Geneva to see a few days of the Montreux Jazz Festival, or move onto Croatia. If Croatia, that sets off a whole new chain of plans with where to take the bike and box in order to be able to ride ferries and busses where I need to go.

Thank you to Jamie Bischoff at The Travel Center of Steamboat for all of her help getting the lodging logistics worked out for these next few jumps between countries. By design, I left the decisions for the last second, which I know must drive her nuts.



Photographic note – I find that I have been taking a lot of pictures of roads as I am riding. As a photographer, I know there is no reason to take a photo that has no subject or activity, but I am regularly breaking that rule in order to try to capture the mood of these wonderful riding roads. With as lightly traveled as they are, I could wait around for hours before any activity took place that would provide a subject, so I just compose the best I can (with light that is almost always too hot) and shoot. Once I get back home, I think I will create a collection of road pictures and call it “WYLTBRTR” (“Wouldn’t you like to be riding this road?”).