The past few days I've been making some excursions out to the mountains east of Roma. They're fairly far away so it's hard to cram too many climbing adventures into a single weekend, but I get there when I can.
The first one I did took me away from the coast on Via Cristoforo Colombo, toward Rome, past the remains of some seriously ancient (and still functional!) Roman aqueducts, and up the first climb of the day to Castel Gandolfo.
This is the summer home of the Popes, and it was...nice. I then rode around the rim of the series of mountains which surround a nice lil' lake, through hillsides covered in grapevines, and into Frascati. From there, I headed up toward the mountain's peak, which had some pretty awesome ancient Roman ruins. Here's a Map My Ride ride map of the ride I did which I then mapped using Map My Ride:
Then, today I went for a little jaunt with a few other gents who I recently befriended on the roads (my Italian is getting much better). We headed down the coast on the Lungomare to Torvaianica and then cut inland and kept going. The roads got progressively steeper until we reached the edges of a town called Lanuvio, at which point the switchbacks began. Awesome. Here is another map of my ride which I mapped using Map My Ride:
Next Up: A friend of mine has promised to drive us out to Chieti, so we can ride to the climb at Blockhaus on the course used on Stage 17 of this year's Giro d'Italia! Pumped!
