Thursday, June 26: Santa Vittoria d'Alba to Asti (60k)
We started at 8:30 today, hoping to beat the heat. However, Claudio (who was drawing the arrows today) had left about 30 min. before us, so by 9am we caught up to him in Alba and relaxed for half an hour in a cafe. Carolyn took a picture of Jeff with his caffe shakeratto (fredo), in a martini glass.
As we climbed out of Alba, we thought we were heading into a storm but only got a few cool raindrops out of it; by 11am it was sunny, hot and humid again. The ride was a bit shorter then originally planned today because of the heat, or else we might have biked through Barbaresco. Before getting to Asti, all 13 of us had a long lunch at Ristorante Concordia in S. Martino Alfieri--the power was out in Asti until 2pm. On the final approach, Jeff and Noreen powered ahead; Melanie and Carolyn followed at a more temperate pace, but Mel narrowly avoided being hit by a car as they emerged from a tunnel through the city wall the last kilometer from the hotel.
The hotel was very comfortable; we had an art deco room divider and two yellow loveseats in our room. At 7:15, the group met to walk to Il Flauto Magico for dinner. The food was good but the dining room was very hot. Noreen promised that there was a dark rain cloud hovering overhead, and she and Carolyn each knocked an air-conditioner grate out of the window seats trying to look for/at it. The hot weather and rainclouds made it tough to take pictures today.