[slideshow]We were still awake after 26 hours and quite hungry so we joined Val (a fellow cyclist) for brunch at our Masseria Torre Maizza Hotel restaurant. After lunch, I insisted on a short nap before exploring the area and ocean around the hotel. Some of our cycle mates advised against this nap plan of mine, “Just tough it out ” I was told. “N0, I’ll be fine!”, says I.
Twenty three hours later…I awoke just in time for breakfast. Perhaps, I should have listened.
As we were finishing breakfast the next morning our hosts told us that there would be a cooking class at 10:30 am where we could get hands on experience of cooking a “typical” Puglian meal. “Sign me up!” I heard myself say. TWWNCBUIP concurred.
Soon we were rolling flour, water, and some other stuff into a round dough wheel which we filled with chopped mozzarella, cherry tomato, basil and made ‘typical’ panzerotti and drank prosecco, we rolled more dough laid it on a wire ‘guitar’ and made noodles and drank prosecco. We chopped onion, tomato and other stuff and made bouillabaise and drank prosecco, or at least that’s the way I remember it.
After the feast we met with our VBT leaders for instructions on biking and Italian biking hand signs (not the ‘typical’ Italian handsigns).
We took a 6 mile “warm up” trip out to the Roman ruins near Egnazia and the VBT staff were kept busy with flat tires and chasing down some unnamed cyclist. There were several (okay, so maybe it was just one) cyclist who had trouble recognizing the markers for turns and several times had to be rescued and returned to the route.
