29 July 2006: Today’s wake up time was a little bit later, at 9:30. I discovered, full of joy and happiness, that the rain had already stopped, about 2 hours earlier, since the road was not completely dry. I enjoyed once again my breakfast (coffee and pastry) and loaded up my stuff quickly, since I was already late about one hour from my day’s schedule.
Setting a course for Castelfranco, I saw that the distance shown on the road signs was 130 kilometers. I chose the provincial road and not the autostrada, since I wanted to take a look around. Theoretically, my target was to follow SS53 (Superstrada), practically, I was wandering around SR and SP roads (neighborhood roads, alleys) due to false response on the maps of the GPS. For example, the GPS was showing to me that I was 15 meters left or right from my course, resulting to conflict. Around 12:30 I reached Castelfranco. Familiar area, from last year, even though our staying there was only for 5 minutes, the time needed to make 3 circles around the central castle of the city.
Castelfranco is a really nice town. In the middle of the town there was the old castle, were expensive shops and pubs were existing inside. Outside of the castle, a small and narrow circular river splits it from the rest of the city, where many cafeterias and shopping centers exist. I sat at a cafe (Testa rossa) until I could find what I would do with the shop (Market2Ruote). I couldn’t locate it anywhere close, thinking that it should be somewhere there. The landscape looked like a deserted town. The waitress at the cafe didn’t know or didn’t understand when I asked her about the shop. On my next question about a room to stay, fortunately enough, she sent me to one very good and cheap. One-room bed for 41€, parking included, it was all that I needed. After that, the familiar routine took place: Park my bike, unload my stuff and lastly a relaxing shower.
Half an hour later I was in the center of the town, walking this time, just in case I could find the shop everybody was talking about back in Greece, but in vain …
Somewhere on my way back, I found by pure luck a advertisement “Market 2 Ruote” with the address beneath. I marked it down and returned to my hotel. I was informed there by the hotel owner that all the shops on Saturday were closing in the noon and opened up again at 4pm until 7:30pm in the afternoon. I went out again to eat and drink a coffee and then returned back to my hotel room where I slept for one hour. Around 5pm I took the bike, tuned my GPS with the address I had marked earlier and in five minutes I found the shop. Lots of motorcycles parked outside while the shop was full of people! Motorcyclists’ happy shop! This shop was familiar from the internet too, since a lot of Greek people buy from there. I actually did some very interesting purchases.
Since my happiness and consumer needs were filled to the max, I returned to the hotel. I went out for a coffee where I discovered that by that time, the city was full of life; it looks like they were waiting for the sun to come down in order to get out. The place seemed a lot different than the one I saw when I first came. There’s a lot of life, due to tourist attraction and it’s a very lovely place and not too expensive. I returned late night back to my hotel to sleep.