Biking through Tarquinia

Tarquinia is another small town real close to Tuscania. We took a day trip there to bike through the town and then visit an agritourism farm. Agritourism is becoming a big thing these days in Italy. Farms are becoming businesses and building mini-hotels on-site to allow tourists the opportunity of experiencing Italian farming. The farm that we visited harvests olives and grapes, and also sells pigs. I learned that black and green olives actually come off the same tree! Green olives are just less ripe than the black ones. The farmers there usually pick the olives once a few have started to turn color, and then they press them for olive oil. Their grapes are grown using two different methods: Roman and Modern. The Roman method consists of growing the grape vines closely together, and the modern method is growing them further apart but branching over on top creating a canopy. The Roman method produces less grapes of better quality.

Lauren and I also biked through the town of Tarquinia. We were a little worried because Tarquinia is on a hill, and we were afraid of lots of uphill biking, but most of the tour was downhill. I even managed to capture some really good photos of the BOTH of us while biking at the same time! However, I did almost crash! Good thing I took that Mountain Biking test at kamp......