We followed up our week of Tuscany Cycling with a week of cycling based in Riccione, a seaside town on the east coast of Italy, on the Adriatic riviera.
Riccione is in the middle of a stretch of seaside towns where mainstream Italy takes their families for summertime fun. Riccione attracts families with children, thanks to its theme parks; hotels organize baby sitting for kids all day in the hotels and on the beach. Rows and rows – and rows – of lounge chairs with beach umbrellas, amusement park rides and games, swimming pool and hottubs, and beach bars and gelato stands stretch for MILES… as far as the eye can see.
The main streets of Riccione are pedestrian walkways and are lined with bars, shops, restaurants, and hotels; in the evenings these streets were packed with (mostly) Italian families from toddlers to the elderly with the festive crowd not thinning until well into the night.
The Emilia Romagna area is super for cycling as once you ride west of the residential neighborhoods of the seaside towns, you enter the rolling hills that stretch from here to the west coast, encompassing Tuscany (Florence is straight west of Riccione).
The beachside hotels had a stroke of genius when they expanded their tourist season by becoming ‘bike hotels’ in the spring months before the beach hordes descend. A number of Riccione’s hotels provide specific facilities for cycling tourists, including bike hire, cycle storage and tour guides. We stayed at one such hotel, The Dory Hotel, which in March-May can host upwards of 120 cyclists/day, but as we were there in June, there were 8-15/day. 1-2 guides led us out each day on varying difficulty of cycling routes, a different destination every day.
The beach scene – and cocktail menu, appetizers included scene – are next level in Riccione. Italy, you know how to live! 🇮🇹 ❤️
We added a new country to our list (86 for Mark, 85 for Shauna) when our route took us up to San Marino, a land-locked autonomous country completely within Italy – who knew! – and also the oldest republic in the world. It was a bit hazy to capture the increedible views, but we were hapy for the cloud cover in this 1,700 meter climbing day.
Bianca gave us a bit of a scare (and herself) with this little spill … note the skid mark! She was a helluva trouper carrying on the rest of the day – and the next and the next! – despite being both sore and shaken.
We found LOTS and LOTS of gelato!
