South to the Riviera

We expected to spend most of the day traveling, including several hours on the autostrada.  But this central part of the day was bookended by some excitement, both planned and unplanned.

classic cars in Bergamo

We had noticed yesterday that the Citta Alta was setting up for a classic car and motorcycle rally.  Many roads to the upper town were closed in preparation for the display and rally, but Rob eventually found a back way up and we managed to park (there were many many more visitors' motorcycles there today than yesterday), to the annoyance of the local parking meister who claimed that we were blocking his driveway. Rob managed to soothe him, and so we were able to join the crowds eyeing the machines. 

Then back to the business of traveling south to the Mediterranean, mainly by autostrada which was painless but not very scenic as we made our way around Milan and headed towards the Italian Riviera, exiting at Alba to take rural roads.  

The Piedmont hill towns and vineyards provided eye as well as biking pleasure.  Since this was a Sunday, the number of motorcycles on these roads was high. As we neared our target of Finale Ligure, the fog rolled in and made travel on these narrow twisty roads a real challenge, especially given the Italian need to speed.

riding in fog

Another challenge awaited us.  Checking three hotels on the Finale Ligure waterfront we discovered that all were fully booked.  We looked farther inland, checked four more, and learned that tomorrow is a holiday in Italy and that the town was absolutely full due to this 3 day Memorial Day equivalent. Back to the autostrada at 8:30 pm with dusk descending, we exited at Savona, following the recommendation of one of the FL hoteliers. There we found two hotels booked but the third and last in town had two rooms left.  A big sigh of relief.

rde: Lesson learned: We have to pay more attention to holidays. Missed May 8 last year in France, leading to our trading cash-for-gas that day. Ditto on June 8. But this year June 1 in Italy? Darn, I assumed that a Sunday night would be a dead zone here.