8.6.09

It's 10pm and I have just climbed the stairs to my room having finished this huge dinner. Delicious,but if I have to eat like this every night I am going to come back home the size of a house. Started with tagliatelle with meat for a starter (that would have been enough) but the next course was roast pork, potatoes, beans, peas and roast onion. Very tasty, and then panna cotta with strawberry to finish off. Washed down of course with a glass or two of vino rosso.
I have my panniers packed and I am ready to set out tomorrow. The tour girl is bringing my bike in the morning at 9am and will brief me then and I start out about 10.00am. Wow, now I am really nervous. There is an English couple doing the walking trip, we all got picked up at Vicenza and brought out to Cortela by van. They got briefed tonight as they need to set out at just after 8am, so we sat together for dinner. This is their 6th Headwater tour, so that helped boost my confidence, if nothing else then in the company. But we are the only ones doing the trip at this point. And the walkers and cyclists don't meet up again until dinner on the final night. There is another group of cyclists coming in two days time and they will meet up with Chris and Allen midway. But apart from that we're on our own.
So when I finish this I will seriously read my notes for tomorrow so that things look at least vaguely familiar In the meantime I will bring you up to date with today.
As you know I was in Venezia. Well actually outside of Venezia at Mestre. So after breakfast, cereal and yoghurt followed by a croissant with a couple of cups of cafe negro, I caught the bus into Venice to the bus station I started out at yesterday. And then I spent the day wandering about, taking photos, and getting used to being out there on my own. It was still a bit scary trying to order food – well the ordering went okay it was really knowing the process. Here you order eat and then pay at a different place on the way out. Bit confusing really. Because I had had breakfast at 7.30am by 10.45 I was feeling peckish so had a wee pizza (pizza picolo) and a cappuccino. And then about 1pm I had a panino picolo ( a tiny filled roll of ham and cheese) and this time a cafe latte. I went into a couple of churches, they were amazingly beautiful with amazing paintings on the ceilings. Met a couple of kiwi's on one of the canal bridges and stopped to talk to them for a while, so good to be speaking English. I haven't spoken properly since breakfast time yesterday – I had foreigners beside me on the plane. He was a very good looking young Maori chap, recognisable by his tattoos on his arm. They weren't talking to each other, so I took a gamble and said Kia Ora kiwis as they walked past and sure enough they were. Figured if they weren't they wouldn't answer me. They had just got off the bus having just arrived from Turkey.
Along the way I bought a few nick nacks and then headed back to Mestre to collect my bag from the hotel and buy a ticket to Vicenza. It cost E3.85 to go from Venice to Vicenza – a 58 minute train journey. That's less than a cup of coffee. I kept worrying that I was on the wrong train as none of the station names were recognisable, and my GPS wasn't matching the names of the stations, but thankfully I ended up at the right place. As I said, I took an earlier train, and sat at the station reading my book until I was approached by the Headwater rep, a lovely young lady from the UK who has been out here doing this job since the beginning of May.
Well I guess I should try and get some sleep, if I am going to cycle 38km to tomorrow, and here's hoping I can log into the internet from here. Bet I can't.
Ciao for now and will catch you all tomorrow.