Some stones still stand, sad,
Awaiting their turn to fall,
But we preserve them.
The dogs were still barking when we woke up. Flipping them off didn't do anything. Ignoring them didn't do anything. Chasing them away didn't do anything. Sigh. We packed as quickly as we could, shoveled what we could of our remaining pasta (there was still a tupperware-full after breakfast) into our mouths, and headed out.
A few kilometres from where we stayed, another set of Etruscan ruins was indicated on the map. This one was supposed to include a necropolis and the ruins of a town, so we asked the café owner for directions and started a ridiculous 500m climb up to see some history. We arrived at the top, panting, and Evan swore he wouldn't drink coffee any more (the caffeine makes it harder for one to bike). We joked that some Italian person would probably kill him if he ordered a tea.
The sites atop the hill had a few placards telling their story; the area had been settled by the Etruscans early on, but they weren't there for very long. There were some indications that the village had been abandoned in the Carthaginian wars. At some point, other later civilisations used the same spot for a short time, but they, too, left after not too long. We only poked through three of the sites: the town, the mysterious wall (someone thought it was a city wall, someone thought it was a retaining wall, and the sign relented that no one actually knew what the hell it was for), and one tomb. There were a number of other tombs stretching down the hill, but they were along a gravel path that we decided we would rather not take on our bicycles. Anyway, there were some other ruins we wanted to see later in the day.
Down from the tombs, we headed to Gavorrano, where we were again assured that most of Europe doesn't "get" free Wifi. We sat in a café and paid 1€50 for 30 minutes of Internet. Sigh. At least we got to sip on deliciious Italian wine at the same time...
From there the road systems got sort of confused. The Via Aureliana is the road that we want to take to Rome, essentially. We actually looked it up on Wikipedia during our half hour, and it informed us that it was built by an ancient Roman military commander. There's actually a cool article on how the Romans built roads, with a standard width of 15 feet, which contains a map of some of the better-known roads leading from Rome elsewhere. But anyway, the Via Aureliana is in some places a motorway-like road which does not permit bicycles. It's hard to tell from our map where that is, but we hoped that it wasn't the bit just south of Gavorrano, since no other roads really service that area.
It turned out that it was alright for bikes to be on the road there, but it was in no way pleasant. We very quickly decided that we would be happier going a few kilometres out of our way on some country roads. So we did. Unfortunately, these roads did not contain many settlements, so it was hard for us to find water. We wound up asking a random Italian woman if there was a fountain nearby, and she said that there wasn't, but she was happy to fill our bottles from her garden hose (which spouted potable water). During this stretch, we also had to fix a flat tyre for the first time in a while. We're not really sure what caused it, but it was a neat little puncture on my front wheel.
As evening approached, we made it to the other ruins site that we had hoped to see: Cosa. There was an amazing amount of stuff there! It was originally a Roman colony (seemed strange to me that they would set up a colony just 150km from their centre, but whatever), and it was populated off and on into the 14th century. There were some awesome stories related to it, including some about slaves and skeletons and massive town burnings and wars and the like, but more awesome were the structures and their amazing level of preservation. There were multiple temples, one to Jupiter (father god) and one to Diana (goddess of hunting and the moon) and one to Dionysos (god of wine), and the forum area had baths, a voting area, a debating area, a jail, a theatrical performance area, and some other things. I think we'll put up some photos of the guide book we got (for 1€ each, we got to wander through the museum, and we were given a big packet of information about the site).
When we returned to our bikes after the visit, there was a mysterious note tacked to one which said only "Our compliments :)" and bore signatures. We saved it. We like it.
We headed out from Cosa down the coast, and we realised it was getting dark and was already too late to find a supermarket for foodstuffs. Fortunately, our lunchtime meal of the remaining pasta had been rather large, so we weren't starving... but it's sad not to eat. We found a campsite on a soft bed of pine needles just off the road. One one side, a pine tree. On another, the road. On another, a beautiful open field. On the fourth side... train tracks. They seemed to be used a little more than we expected, but hopefully we can get some sleep. Roma is only 130km away or so, and we're hoping to haul ass and make it there tomorrow night. The allure of a shower and a bed is strong.