Day 52: Short and steep to Giaglione

Avigliana – Giaglione  37.81km 🚴‍♀️ 2.36.10 ⏱14.5km/hr ⬆️ 425m (Suuz 563m) ⬇️ 95m 🌡33C

Waking up after a very hot night wasn’t too hard in the sauna they called a room. Breakfast was included, that’s why they call it a bed and breakfast I guess, but I do suggest they drop the breakfast part. A very old croissant 🥐, even older cookies and stale toast and a small tub of sugary yoghurt. Suuz said the coffee ☕️ was okay, but that’s all we got. We don’t mind different food habits in countries, we even like it (although garlicky noodle breakfast in China 🇨🇳 is a bit difficult, for Mas), but don’t give us old crappy food and call it breakfast. It became even worse when the lady counted the towels and said she was missing two (which were right there in the room), sadly neither of us had to make a big nr. 2 before we left.

Once we were on the bikes the road went up right away. And not just up, insane mental incline up. And not on a normal road, nope on a road that looked like the Munnikenweg but then with smaller cobble stones and holes 🕳. It was just not okay from pocket earth 🌎 to send us up there. And down on the other side since it was as steep and the stones made it hardly impossible to go down without breaking bike and body. We did make it down alive and changed our route to find some nice asphalt for the rest of our ride. Except when cycling though a few medieval towns, but they were really interesting so the challenging road is forgiven.

We had a coffee break ☕️ in Sant’Antonino de Susa together with some local women and men enjoying their morning espresso while chatting away. It was most definitely entertaining. Mas made a phone call to her mom since it’s her birthday 🎂 today! Happy birthday mama! It was a very nice stop, and besides the fact it was already up to 28 degrees and humid around 9.30am in the morning, it wasn’t bad to be on the road at all. We cycled a bit further and saw the mountains 🏔 showing up. Yesterday’s haze was still there so the mountains looked a little faded, but they are still impressive. We cycled on a bike path for a little while, but had to let that one go and cycle on the main road again. It wasn’t too bad except for the daily jerk encounter (in a white BMW or Audi). We were going slowly up the whole day but the real thing started after we had reached Susa.

We had an early lunch 🥙 in Susa and cycled by Nonsolobici to have a look at Mas her gearing system. It was a little off and she probably could have fixed it herself, but it took this dude two minutes and it would probably have cost us like an hour. Since we are staying in a small town with hardly anything there we did groceries in Susa as well. We took our time since it was nice and cool in the supermarket. Also, after Susa it was 250m up in 3.5km, so we didn’t mind postponing that for a bit. We bought quite some food cause we are going to cook ourselves tonight so it took some time to pack everything in our heavy bags 💼.

The first piece was the steepest and a little busy, but after we made a left turn in the direction of Giaglione it got quiet. So quiet we cycled on the wrong side of the road for some parts since that’s where the shade was. The last part into town was pretty steep again, but we knew we were almost at the hotel. Luckily we were able to check in early, Suuz had called ahead since check in was not before five and we were there around one o’clock.

The hotel is pretty nice, but sad enough the cook 👨‍🍳 took the high road so we need to find somewhere else to have dinner 🥘 tomorrow. Every step out of this door is up or down so it’s not very likely we want to leave the hotel. Which is all a good thing since we really need a rest day before going into the Alps.  Another ‘opportunity for improvement’  (or ‘problem’ if you ask Mas) is that the airco is more like a fan so that kind of sucks, but the shower is great and cold so all we need to do is put a chair in the shower 🚿and take turns. We made dinner out on the balcony, tuna pesto pasta 🍝, and after doing the dishes we watched a show and went to bed 🛌. Looking forward to a good rest day tomorrow!

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