Friday, 12 July, 2024 – Sunday, 21 July, 2024
After a bit over two weeks and 500 km of gradual cycling, we finally arrived at Lake Garda, where we planned to have a few days off. As mentioned in the previous post, this is where we meet with Iris’s family. After some miscommunication regarding the address of the apartment and our unnecessary climb into the hills with bikes, we managed to find them, and we were all really happy to meet.
To start our rest period, we headed to Aquapark Caneva, where we spent most of the day running around and having fun on waterslides. A perfect way to relax, do some other movement than cycling, and get our minds away from the trip. A fun day spent with family.
But this is where our relaxation ended because their view of vacation is a bit different than most people’s. Instead of lying on the beach, they prefer to go cycling somewhere far. So naturally, they brought their bikes with them, and we had some cycling planned for the next two days. We headed 65 km to the most northern point of the Garda Lake, near where we booked an apartment, spent the night there, and then came back to the starting location. But we had the luxury of leaving most of our stuff with the car, so our bikes were pretty light, and it wasn’t that hard.
On Monday morning, we finally did what we had procrastinated on long enough: wash our bike chain and gears and do some quick service checks. We also washed all of our clothes and packed most of them back into our bags. In the evening, we had the highlight of our vacation planned: Gardaland. We spent 5 hours in there, and we tried out almost all of the rollercoasters; we also managed to do some of them multiple times. We were pretty lucky because a lot of people went home early and the place wasn’t that crowded; otherwise, the average wait time for a ride can be over 2 hours.
After that, our time with family came to an end. We said our goodbyes on Tuesday morning, and we headed on our way toward Milano. It was a bit hard because this was probably the last time we see Iris’s family before we fly to the Americas, and we’re not sure if we will meet them there or not.
Our plan is to travel on as low a budget as possible so that we can stay on tour for longer with the money we have saved. There are two main things that have a huge effect on the total cost of the trip: where you sleep and what you eat. Small everyday costs quickly add up, and just 10€ each day results in over 3500€ for a whole year.
To start with sleeping, we had no problem deciding that comfort is not that high on our priority list and that we’re willing to risk it a bit to save a lot of money. That’s why we bought a tent, and we try to use it to (wild)camp as much as possible instead of going to hostels, camps, or hotels. We also try to use the WarmShowers platform to find people who would host us, but that’s more of an exception than a rule, and we don’t rely on it since most people don’t even reply and we get a lot of negative responses. A great option is also to just ask people if we can sleep in their yard or in a garden, and so far we’ve been pretty lucky with that, but for us, that’s a huge amount of everyday stress with the pressure that we have to find someone. That’s why we’re slowly trying to accept the mindset that we ask people if an opportunity arises, but if there is none, we will figure out something else.
Regarding food, we can’t go without it, and it’s very easy to get carried away when you’re hungry in a store, so you buy some unnecessary snacks or cold juices. Also, the food in Europe and North America is way pricier than in Latin America. That’s why we planned early, and two years ago, we started collecting a ton of dehydrated and travel food that we could get for free or for cheap. Eventualy we collected so much of it that it was clear we wouldn’t be able to take it all with us. So we prepared a couple of packages that our families would bring us when we meet. And this week, we got our last package of over 15 kg of food. When we use it all, we’re on our own, but on the other hand, we will be a lot lighter since we won’t carry more than a few days worth of food.
As we started our second half of Italy, from Garda Lake towards France, we decided to try and wild camp some nights whenever this was possible. A few people told us that a camping ban in Italy focuses more on campers and multi-day camping on the same spot and that sleeping somewhere for a single night and leaving early in the morning (also called bivouacing) is a sort of gray zone. If you’re polite with people or the police, you will usually get away with it, or they will just send you on your way without a ticket. So, fingers crossed!
Our first night in the open was decent. We picked an area on the edge of a grass field and just hoped for the best. Just like most of the nights before, we were cooking ourselves in a tent, and it took us a while before we could fall asleep, but just as we did, a farmer came near with a tractor to turn over all of the cut grass, which took him around an hour at 10 p.m. Meanwhile, we were nervous he would see us or come close to us, but luckily he worked on all of the surrounding fields except on ours. In the morning, we woke up at 5 AM to leave early, but during the night, a group of over 20 red and black slugs decided to explore our tent, and they were all over it. One of us had to calmly remove them while the other one had a small panic attack.
For our second night after leaving the lake, we once again had some extreme luck. It was 6 p.m., and we were sitting on a bench in the small city of Saiano. We have already decided that we will have to sleep somewhere outside, probably next to a corn field a couple of kilometers back and we were just waiting for time to pass. Then, as we were sitting there, a guy named Roberto approached us and started talking with us about our tour, and he explained that he also bike toured himself around the coast of Italy. He asked us where we planned to sleep, and as we said that we didn’t really know yet, he invited us to his house. Now this is the second time someone has invited us on their own! Sometimes we can’t believe our luck. As we later found out, Roberto also has a dream of cycling around the world, and he’s currently saving money to pursue his passion. We really wish him the best of luck, and hopefully one day we will meet on the road.
To take a break from all the cycling, we were lucky enough to find a clean river, the Serio after Romano di Lombardia, next to which we had a nice rest in the shadow. The highlight of that day was definitely the moment we walked into the river and spent the next half an hour laying in it. After so many hot days, it felt amazing, and we wished that the river would be even colder.
There isn’t much to say about the road we cycled. It’s still all very flat; the main difference is that vineyards were replaced by large fields of corn, which, near Milano, received the company of rice fields. We reached Milano on the fourth day after Lake Garda. Our initial plan was to completely avoid it and go around it on the southern side, but since we slept near it, it seemed doable to just go through it in one day and then find a nice sleeping spot on the other side. For the last 20 km, we rode on the Naviglio del Martesana next to the canal, and this brought us to the city of Milano.
What was our first expression of Milano? We were a bit shocked. The outer parts of the city of high fashion looked old, there was trash everywhere, and there also seemed to be a homelessnes problem. The saddest part was when we saw a couple of teenagers who spent the night under the bridge. An even bigger shock was when we arrived in the inner circle of the city. Instead of the poor area, we were suddenly met with high skyscrapers and modern-looking buildings. There was a clear border between the regions, and we could also feel it in the way people walked around, which was more relaxed. Our arrival in Milano left a bitter taste in our mouths, and we didn’t really love the city. We just wanted to go through it as fast as possible and leave it behind. We still took a break in the center, where it felt safer, and while we were sitting on some stairs, a guided group of tourists came by, and we overheard a guide say that there’s a castle in the center, which is the most beautiful thing in Milano. It was indeed nice, but it was crowded with tourists, so we just quickly took some photos. We left Milano, still following the canal toward the city of Vercelli.
All the way from Milano to Abbiategrasso, we rode next to the canal, with fields of corn or rice on both sides. This whole area is very unsleepable; most of the rice fields are submerged under the water, while corn is planted to the very corner of each field. There are also a lot of smaller canals around each field into which water from the main canal can be guided. But in most cases, there is only some stale water in them, which is an ideal environment if you try to raise up a family of mosquitoes.
Since we were again faster than we predicted, Sunday was our rest day. We spent most of it at the bus station in Piccolini, drying out our tent from the last night’s rain. Again, there was some wildcamping involved, this time next to the cemetery. Very quiet neighbors, we can’t complain.
