You know you can ride there from here...

After a splurge-licious birthday weekend in Venice, we looked forward to burning some calories and getting out into the countryside. While checking out of our hotel the hotel clerk (a true Venetian local, although as we would later surmise not a cyclist), encouraged us to ride out of Venice north around the Adriatic rather than the short ferry crossing we had planned on, "truly beautiful" he assured us, and "great for cyclists". As it turned out he wasn't entirely wrong, the "peloton" of caterpillars we saw during a snack break was cool, but we did have to battle for road space for the first 45km until we were able to find quieter, more enjoyable (and safer) roads. We finally arrived to Portogruaro, a sleepy but beautiful town with a well preserved, walled old-town center with a leaning bell tower and awesome Piazza where we enjoyed some cold beers.

The next day we were able to splice together a zig-zagging network of secondary roads most of the way to Aquiliea, and then a mix of gravel and macadam bike path out to the resort area of Grado. We camped along the beach, and although it was pretty, relatively vacant (still low season along the Adriatic), and convenient, it was super buggy. We got on the road as early as possible the next day to get away from the Mosquitos.

The ride to Trieste and then on through Slovenia and into Croatia was a big one, longer than we anticipated for sure. Highlights along the route included a roadside visit with Linda and James (touring on their bikes for 1 and 2 years respectively and have a refreshing "open ended" approach to their travels). By the time we made it to Muggia, Italy we were ready to be done riding for the day but still had 35km to cover. We ended up making an all-too-common late-in-the-day error by choosing the direct (shortest) route to our destination, which turned out to be mobbed with cars and while not as bad as the segment leaving Venice, was far less enjoyable than the slightly longer and more circuitous route would have been - lesson learned, again, we hope.

Our final kilometers had us slowly but pleasantly climbing up to the tiny village of Momjan, Croatia. The Adriatic coastline spread out below us as we rode through countryside punctuated with vineyards and olive groves. A few kilometers from Momjan we were joined by our hosts Michael and Marijan as they caught up to us on their super sporty race-worthy tandem. We appreciated their escort and tried to keep up the small talk as we pedaled up the nearly 18% grade to the end of our day and their home.