Page 24 - FAST 2024 Calendar Yearbook

Riding Day 1, Rest Day 2, Rome to Pompei 120km / 75 miles
After exploring Rome for two days with Sophie, I drop her off at the Central Train Station on Sunday afternoon and we say "Arrivederci Roma" and good bye to each other as she returns to her home town near Florence. We've made plans for her to come and visit me in Los Angeles in October, a trip she says she has al- ways dreamed about.
Our Edelweiss Tour Group leaves the Occidental Aurelia Hotel in Rome on Monday morning, and we ride south towards the Amalphi coast. In the mountains high above Lake Albano, we stop briefly to take a look at the The Pop's summer palace which sit on a hill on the opposite shore.
From there we ride down to the coast to the enchanting little seaside town of Sperlonga which invites us to have lunch overlooking the beautiful beach.
To avoid the big city of Naples and its notorious traffic, we next jump on a toll road taking the A1 to A3 and then exiting at Pompei West. Our Hotel Forum is in the center of Pompei, the old city of which was buried under 40- feet of ash by the neighboring volcano Vesuvius in 79 AD, killing all of the population of thou- sands, but leaving the city lost but nearly intact for some. 1,800 years. It is really something to walk through the city 2,000 years later that survived.
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