From Bologna to Florence

I am re-typing this as my phone tells me that it has not posted and deleted the blog. Excuse me if this is a copy or not as funny as the original!

Thursday from Bologna to Florence ( that's Firenze to the Italians who can't spell!)
We set off early to miss the mad traffic but we didn't! The locals had heard about 3 Lycra-clad Gods cycling through the city but they were disappointed when they found us instead so tried to mow us down at every opportunity!
With hindsight choosing a new route in the bar the night before may have been a mistake. We set off from Bologna and after losing the traffic we turned a corner and went straight up, and I mean UP! I'm not the best map reader but if you see a name called Dante's Peak and you're cycling through it there's a bit of a clue! Needless to say after 10k of cycling up a hill I didn't need to, I did have a bit of a toys out of pram moment, I can't repeat the actual words but let's just say some Italians who heard picked up a bit of real English!
After we had dropped to the bottom of the extra hill we added in we started the climb proper.. 40k straight up, this was our first crossing of the Apennines, lovely!
Full marks to Pete Connelly who dragged us all up the hill, he was strong whilst the rest of us just wanted to go home!
We managed to get through the mountains in one piece but that was nothing compared to the traffic in Florence....every city seems to get worse!
We managed to get to one of Florence's tourist traps( sorry, locations of significant historical importance!) after we had fought off the hordes of American and Japanese tourists we managed to get 6in of space on Ponte Vecchio, just so Pete could prove to some of his ( careful with money) sponsors that he had done his bit. We got the photo and collapsed in the hotel , we had completed 130k that day and we were knackered!

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