Rest Day

Those two words have a sweet sound
After a longish day in the saddle on Monday it was going to be nice to put the cue in the rack for a day and do nothing , or close to it .
The ride into Blaivers in mid 30's temps was sapping and chasing Litchfield ( who obviously received a covert shipment of performance enhancing drugs from somewhere ) didn't leave much time for a breather. He forgets I'm a SAP ie Senior Aged Person , not the other SAP .
The first surprise in our Blaivers Hotel was ( don't know why according to Mike ) being upgraded from a basement carpark room , or close to it , to a suite , nothing more than we deserve , they obviously recognise classy people .
Very comfortable beds had us waking around 9ish and off to breakfast we went . Bowls of jams , spreads , butters etc made it look impressive but not much else so we were forced to nick several slices of apple strudel , cakes and fruit as payback .
Our first venture of the day was a 10km bus ride into the nearby city of Balzano and an encounter with the Italian bus ticket system . Looked simple enough , place Euro 1.50 into the machine and out comes a ticket , yeah right . Every coin we put in got rejected , just lucky that machine was firmly fixed or it was out the window .After working out ( more by accident ) that we needed to push a button first we finally had our ticket and so the other 28 people in the queue could now get theirs .
I needed some more Euros and this is a whole new battle front , dealing with ATM's only in Italian . After threatening to chew my card up after attempt number 63 I finally extracted some local moolah , that machine was close to destruction also .
One of Mike's panniers was coming apart at the seams and our priority was to replace it . We located a 5 level bike store which made Ivanhoe Cycles look tiny and purchased a set of Deuter panniers .
Back at out hotel we took a closer look at the pannier and decided to attack the split seams with good old Super Glue . It worked a treat in sealing the seams so now he has 2 sets of panniers , you never know when you might need a spare set on tour .
A casual stroll for dinner to the local restaurant where Litchy is attempting to create a World Record for pizzas demolished in 3 months , currently his tally stands at around 12 .
A trip to the 5th floor to sit by the pool completed a most relaxing Rest Day , should be more of it .