As a family we love biking. And we love food. So when we saw that some local businesses were organising a day of cycling with gastronomic stops along the way we were immediately on board. Mangia Bevi Bici is an event that has been going on for three years and is slowly gaining popularity by many people living in our small region.
The idea of the day is to do a 30km bike tour (or a shorter 18km version for the little ones) and make small stops in various towns and villages at local restaurants, community centres and gastronomic shops.
Along the way there are stops for antipasto, primo piatto, secondo piatto and dolce. The organisers mapped out a perfect tour along picturesque little streets and roads with just the right amount of cycling in between stops. Usually at each stop there was a choice of several different dishes along with lots of wine and even grappa at the secondo piatto stop. The tour included a surprise honey tasting stop as well as some gifts for the kids along the way (cycle hats and water bottles!).
Some of our favourite dishes of the day were the Pasta con Pesce di Lago (Pasta with Lake Fish), Gnocchi alla Zucca (Pumpkin Gnocchi), Lavarello alla Griglia con Arancio (Grilled Lake Fish with Orange) and of course the impressive cheese and salami plate at one of our favourite local farm.
I’ll be honest though, eating all that food and then having to hop on a bike was at times challenging. I made the suggestion to the organisers that they might want to think about installing a nap-tent halfway through the tour next time.
Even if the sky above was chasing us in between primo and secondo piatto we managed to avoid the storms for most of the day.
Even despite a few steep hills, some fallen off bike-chains and the odd flat tire it was a really wonderful way to spend a beginning-of-fall Sunday. We’ve already started the countdown for next year.
(all photos were taken with iPhone)
Jillian In Italy 