Too Darn Hot

Last night's briefing concluded just before 9.00pm, so only Pina, Bev, Nola and Darlene took the opportunity to check out the "Irish" pub in Zelo and play darts. The rest of us had an early night after a post dinner bottle of red. Next morning we awoke again to clear blue skies. The boat is moored overnight, then usually motors for an hour to hour & a half in the morning before we disembark and ride. This morning we motored to near Trecenta, and started our trip. Our guide Valeria has sussed that we aren't a group of wussy Americanos and upped the pace this morning, although we did have a couple of stops along the way. The first was at Ficarolo, with its leaning bell tower. Like a lot of buildings in the area it was damaged in last years earthquake and is not open to the public at the moment while it awaits money for repairs. The second stop was at Bondeno, where morning coffee's were had with the chance of a short rest. Our destination for the day was Ferrara : we covered the 44 km there by lunchtime, a good ride. There was a reasonable breeze during the morning, but once we reached Ferrara - a town of 360,000 - the breeze went and it became stifling. We mooched around and had lunch, then walked around town a bit filling in time before our guided tour  at 2.45pm. Although interesting , by the time the tour commenced we were hot and bothered after our ride in the morning and not overly keen about walking further through town. The cathedral was impressive, as was the history of the town, but we were grateful when the 75 minutes was up and we could return the the piazza for the hour bus trip to Adria where the boat is moored for the night.. Once there only five of us did the  offered trip to the local museum :

that was really great - a fascinating history of occupation with lots of artefacts. Back to the boat we had another top class three course meal and then sat down for a chat with some more wine. Tomorrow we have another 40km ride with the chance of a swim on a beach on the Adriatic coast - so we are looking forward to cooling off.