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Okay, here we are. Welcome to the next episode and we are now going to go into the countryside, to explore a little bit. Explore local Italy, that's what we're doing. And we have some very exciting challenges prepared so you're not going to want to miss it! Welcome to our travel series across italy where we try and do as much as possible on a thousand euro budget. That's why we're called The Budgeteers. In this episode we're getting out of the cities
into the beautiful countryside, become holy pilgrims and meet the kindest of people as we challenge ourselves on our cheap and crappy bikes to cycle across the stunning region of tuscany. this adventure series is made possible thanks to these amazing travel brands: Ortlieb, Komoot and Tropicfeel. This morning got off to a very weird start. As we left the train station we were immediately questioned by the police. they thought we were stealing bicycles when in reality we were just locking up and storing our own bikes. Bye bikes see you tomorrow. yeah we're even taking our saddles, just we don't want them to get stolen. oh i almost hit my face. but in the end we got into
the car with lorena with very little hassle. today we're leaving our bikes at the train station because we're doing something very special and unique today because before we begin our crazy cycling adventure in tuscany which is the biggest physical challenge we've ever done on our series our friend lorena is taking us all the way into the italian countryside towards the italian alps to show us a very special region famous for its wine called the prosecco hills
and today we got the opportunity to ride along with a farmer named Andrea to explore his extraordinary vineyard. feels like we're almost like suddenly in another country so we're in the andes mountains or. kind of reminds me of the tea plantations in Sri Lanka. yeah they say it has something like that it's like the same style terraces yeah what a view wow these are all the grapes ciao as we followed andrea's father on the tractor up the hill the most stunning and unique landscape revealed itself. which made us understand why these hills are sacred and now labeled as protected unesco world heritage.
unesco world heritage means that this landscape is heritage of everybody forever so our what we have to do is to maintain this area to promote this area, not to change the peculiarity that it's got and also one other particular thing is that the kind of terraces we have are not made by you know uh stones or dry walls yeah it's just soil and grass so there's no other areas in the world where viticulture is made there are other areas where viticulture is made on hills but not in this kind of hills and you see this the kind of salt we got so the roots of the plant are really in the middle of rocks the depth of the soil is
very low so the roots just you know they dig into the rock the taste of the wine is different of course so a lot of minerals in the grapes that's why you're feeling Lina you're feeling all the minerals. - i'm feeling all the minerals so here we've arrived in the prosecco hills and we've been lucky enough to be here while they're actually picking all the grapes which is only apparently 20 days a year so it's lucky that we made it here andrea here is showing us around venice is just down there but it's a little holy today yeah we came from venice this morning and you can see them picking all the grapes over there oh
we're now experiencing the harvest so the fact that we're allowed and be able to be here while they're harvesting is pretty unique yeah we're very great grape grateful oh nice in the meanwhile these men and women are working hard picking all the grapevines clean by hand and piling up huge amounts of grapes this year andrea is lucky with the yield since it's more than usual and we're so lucky to be able to witness all of this in a landscape that is just unbelievably beautiful it really is no wonder that the grapes here are prized as world class the best of the best we're even lucky enough to have a taste
spoiling us and if you're ever curious to taste a really good prosecco try some of the miyoto families it's amazing afterwards we went back down the steep hills and visited their winery where they process the grapes it's not the easiest moment of the year but uh yeah it's probably very busy for you yeah but so much to see in this moment so this is where all the freshly picked grapes arrive yeah so the skin stays inside yeah and the juice comes out and from here the juice just goes into the winery whoa okay this is a big collection of uh
andrea showed us all the different stages of fermentation starting from grape juice to finally becoming a godly sparkling wine if you're ever in the area they offered tours link below we're not sponsored they were just so kind to us family the girls are quite fond of andrea then i expect a wedding invitation very soon after all that winemaking we drove down to lorena's place i spent the evening thinking of a plan for the next days since we still had no idea where to go in tuscany and how to actually get there
good morning it's really early it's 6 o'clock 6 30 in the morning and we're packing up because we're gonna get on a really early train there is nothing more shh there's nothing more comforting than waking up to this to that beautiful face thank you so much for everything this is the biggest i appreciate everything you've done for us and uh and finding us prosecco thank you to that one because she found us but we found her future husband we're walking up on the bikes to see if they're still here we're at the train station where we parked them you're gonna live this moment with us because we have no idea they might be stolen they might not be i hope they're stolen i see it i see jay baluin is this the proper technique
you need to get the train bikes for sale the reason why lina would rather be rid of the bikes today is not only the fact it would be easier to access the trains but there's one big issue we just found out um we're not allowed to go on these trains these are the fast trains these are the high-speed drains if we would get on this train we might make it today easily in like three four hours we'd be there but we can't because we have bikes and they are not allowed on the train yeah we wish we knew this before we started this big travel adventure with trains and bicycles it will now take us a lot
longer to travel across italy especially today since we have to make it from terviso to venice bologna all the way to firenze and tuscany we will have to switch and take many different trains we don't even know if we'll catch our next trains and with us not understanding anything of the italian language we could sense that today was gonna be a tough and exhausting challenge but we just gotta wing it and make the best of it and i think this is where we've made it on the train and this is gonna be our first drink first string of many so this is usually the part of the series where patty's stuff oh i can't say
this is usually the part of the series where patty comes on camera and says he messed up but patty's not here so i had to take that roll over again i'm not the brains of the operation i made us walk across the train station to a platform that wasn't for our train so we missed it we missed the train but that's right we can hop on another one and get back on trough and ty's only hates me a little bit it's gonna be fine we just have to take another train do an extra
hey stop it's a little bit crowded the guy behind me has my butt in his face crazy cold on the train and now we're and now it's crazy all again oh just another 20 minutes after seven eight hours we're here i think it's been longer san migniato this is what it's called a mouthful we're not the only cyclists here which is a good sign but we've seen enough trains for today oh my god yes are you ready
we're now on the bikes and we're trying to find the way to the hostel and uh this is gonna be the first hill that we're gonna do because our hostel is all the way up the mountain of course so let's see how these bikes do how they perform and uh how lena how are legs both of our legs how they would perform against the tuscany hills clena is still having problems with her with her chain you know i think her saddle loosen as well [__] this hill is like your first challenge so hard this is so hot
made it up the first hill this gorgeous view ah this mountain was immediately the highest one there was in the region why are these villages always on the top of the mountain female's behind but she's coming and uh this weather is a bit hotter than venice was what a challenge sweating buckets already this is actually a pilgrimage hostel and then these are our beds i have the top bunk here extra small size has the other top bunk over there yeah good news is this hostel is very cheap it's only
16 euros a night the bad news is i'm very hungry we need to go let's just drop our bags yeah let's go drop our beds we are in a little town up on a hill called sun miniature upon a very very steep hill but this is known to be a pilgrimage town this is a very religious town and why we chose this place to come because it is right on the root of the via franchiseena which is the pilgrimage route all the way from canterbury in england all the way to rome and since we are in italy we wanted to do a little bit of a nice cycling along these ancient
routes yeah so we're not gonna do the whole section in italy but we are gonna do a part of it and i'm really excited i hope i can imagine that a lot of the towns along the way look like this and i have to say this is probably the yeah the most photogenic town we've been in tuscany is supposed to be very beautiful and according to this town if this is anything to go by this is very beautiful yeah but you'll see more of that in the morning i saw some gelato after a long travel day obviously we're finishing the night with gelato super cheap oh so much better than
venice or sir this is the cheapest and most also the best it's so good perfect dessert perfect so we'll see you tomorrow cheers guys we deserved it we earned it we climbed these streets all the way up the top without porters what now carl wants there's a guy who said like tell god your plans good morning this is where our biking adventure actually begins we're in the mountains of tuscany the sun has just risen up we actually don't have any plan on where we're going today we're gonna follow the route of the via french cena
which is the old pilgrimage route that has been around for centuries and we're gonna follow it on our app commute but where are we going and how far we're gonna go we have no idea yeah we have as far as we can get we have no idea about our capabilities as bike packers this is literally the first time that we're doing this we're also in the tuscany hills which are all hills and steep climbs very steep climbs as we've noticed yesterday just to get up here this hill oh damn so hard it's impossible to calculate where we're gonna go where how far we'll get on our cheap bikes
yeah we're just gonna follow the yellow brick road yeah and hopefully it'll take us to oz everything is starting off well trying to get a drone shot over here in tuscany and the drone for some reason reached maximum altitude which is just like this height and crashed into a tree all automatically the controls were completely like overwritten by the security measure so thanks to that the drone is stuck in a tree our drone is right there that ty's throwing sticks down there
now we have a drone and a stick stuck in the tree so we have a ladder three sticks nope four six and some tape we're gonna try to macgyver i guess we can only go for like half distance sticks five six seven so in total this stick is about 12 meters long and we need to reach it over there and uh we're on top of uh here if this works this is the best macgyver solution i've ever thought of took us over an hour we got it i'm gonna go and search for it
oh no i got smudged a bit but at least we got it back damn that was quite a fall from all the way up that tree there right we were meant to be on the road at about eight now eleven but we have a drone we didn't lose a 600 euro drone we did it worth the i was so stressed we didn't lose the drone and now tell me how much better does your coffee taste now that you have a drone a thousand times better it's the coffee of salvation and and also the drone footage that we didn't lose now yeah so anyway we're gonna have breakfast and then we're gonna try to cycle this is what travels is all about it's all you have plans and plans go
awry and they don't go the way you want them to but you deal with the consequences and you make the best of it and now we have a breakfast with an amazing view and a story to tell quite a story and another macgyver skill that something to add to our cv you know drone rescuers we had to overcome a lot of challenges to get here but now finally we can hit the road and this is what we wanted to do most to cycle italy taste the freedom explore the unknown and soak up the
this views a very beautiful view it's kind of the fun thing about being on a trail of pilgrims that we see a lot of other people here makes it a little bit more social yeah i'm gonna make it these climbs are crazy the more and more climbs with you of all the steep tuscany hills the more we start to realize that these old bikes are just not suited for this at all we're still making it up the hill
and we started to doubt our crazy plan if we might have done something which is just too dumb even for us okay we made it at our first stop point and uh lena has already like put in an extra challenge because she missed this exit and uh went all the way down down was fine it was coming back up that was the extra challenge look he didn't miss the turn oh and he's on a mountain bike let's do a cycling series i said it'll be fun she said i don't know what i was thinking i wasn't but i don't regret it no regrets to put things in perspective and in context this is one of the most difficult cycling paths you can choose on commute it says it's expert level and you need to have an excellent physique to be doing it yeah literally
so like it's it's very normal that we're struggling because we're not on professional bikes our bikes together cost less than uh 200 euros cycling isn't hard like i consider myself a pretty fit person this is a legit challenge this is like a very physical challenge as well we're on a budget challenge and now a physical challenge now there's an even bigger challenge because we're coming up on gravel paths like we don't have gravel bikes look at my bike it's a city bike look here is a mountain bike but it's it's at least 10 years old it's
very old and we've got a lot of bags so it's gonna be uh we're hoping not to get any flat tires yes oh my god what did we get ourselves into just a couple of idiots wanting to challenge ourselves yeah whatever i'm having fun i've never felt so beginner at something it's nice to be a beginner like we're total idiots so if we can do it hopefully you can do it as well if that if this is the only inspiration and motivation that we can give you is if we can do it total idiots and hopefully it gives you that little bit of a motivation to go after
as well or just like the intelligence to not go oh yeah or not do the mistakes that we do tons of mistakes no just kidding you should do it and with that little pep talk we were ready to go oh you can do it you gotta lean on your skills and talent don't worry about me mate i love you go on mitt budget cheers forever good job this part is very treacherous it's so steep and uh gravelly and we don't have enough weight on our front tires so it's crazy
i mean all i can do is laugh that's all you guys watching on youtube still a low way to go okay we made it up at the top of the gravel road and uh we actually went off route to see what the gravel roads are like well and i think we can fairly say that we are not equipped for gravel or gravel roads that's something that's really cool and that we've really liked about kamut is that like you it's kind of like buy travelers for travelers because as a traveler like you can
add whatever route you've done that you like so you know we've been following this route we tried to be a little adventurous and now we see why the traveler who added that route made the route you are actually able to follow our route if you go down in the description there's uh our link to the commute journey that we did like the entire trip so you'll see where we ended up and where we probably failed countless times yeah so follow us uh but now we're gonna go down into the village i'm thinking if hopefully we don't fall hopefully we don't break our bikes or ourselves
and then what do you think of a lunch or a ah or just something to i love that refresh ourselves yeah i love that idea maybe a beer oh no oh that out my family thinks i'm gonna call oh we just made it whoa a paved road nice look at this first uh disaster well small disaster small bump in the road as we say uh lena's got a flat tire oui flat tire probably from all the weight of the back tire and the sharp rocks all the weight of my wee bump
ah i'm so hungry to die yeah i'm two until that tire decided to pop we changed our first tire cheers it's really hard to get and to get them replaced on the other tire and the new one that we got doesn't fit the frame the hole's too small one hour delay pop tire sounds like an adventure and wasn't that just what we were really after in the first place a true adventure on the road so we didn't mind even with just a few biscuits for lunch it didn't ruin our mood because we were actually loving this all the way straight today we might be the worst backpackers out there but we're starting to get a hang of it and things
can only get better from here so we continued for another few hours until the sun started setting and the evening rolled in until we arrived in a small little village where we literally hit another roadblock so we hit another roadblock we are now at a cycling tournament so the road's completely blocked off until the tournament i know they're cycling just there the things you see when you're cycling tuscany this is where the competition is held what's up
yeah come on the last lap we win oh my god that was hilarious we just interrupted that kids race just to like cross the finish line yay tell me about that we won all right we made it cheers the most well-deserved beer we've had this entire trip we made it into a town which is not far away from where we actually started like today was
a complete write-off we made so many mistakes so like everything went wrong we took turns making mistakes anyway it was but we it was a fun day like i mean we're gonna try and do better tomorrow uh the only thing is like we are so hungry that's why we just quickly stopped here at this pizza place but we still have to find a place to stay for tonight and it's almost six like it's gonna get dark soon but we just we needed something to eat we haven't eaten since this morning yeah so we're just gonna quickly get a pizza in our stomachs and then try and
find somewhere to sleep and um yeah bike biking is super fun like the places you end up with like you would never otherwise get there so yeah we did find an adventure ooh but here we go this is gonna be amazing we're gonna cycle outside of the city and search for uh a garden to camping like but the sun is going down so we only have a limited amount of time before it's dark and uh after that it's really going to be impossible to to find a place to stay the cycling path just ends we're now outside of town and uh we're hoping to find a place to stay here well just knocking on people's doors but i see a farm up there so we're gonna try and get there
we are cycling around and we're looking for a place to maybe in the garden pitch of a tent to sleep for one night oh high five we found a place to camp oh that was terrible again okay we found a place to camp yeah we cycled outside the city and we see up this hill and there's a bunch of mansions but at the top of the hill we see a big beautiful yellow house with a tractor
we're like oh there's farmers the sun's down already yeah uh so we're like pressed for time and uh what people to choose to like let us camp it's probably gonna be farmers because they're like always friendly and they have lots of land and hopefully also land that is a little bit flat overlooking this beautiful view um and they kindly allowed us to uh camp here and they even gave us water bottles these people are they're super nice and they're like so kind they are going so far out of our away to help us and they just met us like two seconds ago so um can't speak too overwhelmed by their kindness and uh
i also need to help elena because the tents aren't set up it's right mate i'm the fastest oh how would you do that it's unbelievable how our luck changed today we honestly thought we'd have to camp illegally in a ditch somewhere but instead we have this amazing camp spot for free and we were even invited inside the farmer's home to have a shower not fancy we're getting the star treat and on top of that they insisted we eat with them too so over here you have janna at times it was massively confusing because they didn't speak a word of english
but with a bit of google translate and a mix of french and spanish words we made it work okay iceland we haven't traveled there yet so now we're trying the local tuscany liquor oh yeah one wow similar to wine but yeah very strong and clear it's very warm
we're quickly learning that italy isn't just beautiful scenery but the people we were meeting were also incredibly generous and after an eventful tiring but honestly amazing day it was eventually time for us to say good night so that we could have some much needed sleep these people are just the kindest it's amazing even if it's gonna rain it's gonna be worth it no rain covers i love to get a bit wet you know what i mean we're gonna go to sleep why don't we lean up with this view in an open tent with a open sky
and lots of stars you're going to sleep so well this is amazing it's been such a great night so see you tomorrow good night lina why not just next time on the budgeteers we're continuing our backpack adventures across tuscany and we explore italy's capital rome and see how much you can do in this big city on a budget please let us know what you think about these last episodes and if traveling by bike might be something you would try as well give us a like and see you in the next one
