Wow, It's been a while since the last blog post...

Wait a sec, actually it wasn't so long ago! It's just that so many things happen everyday!

So, after spending the afternoon in the beautiful Miyajima, we rode our Specialized Tricross until sunset, and camped in the suburbs of Hiroshima. The morning after, we finished the last goddamn few kilometers and finally reached Hiroshima. As usual, we payed a visit to the first coin laundry we found to avoid being referred by the locals as "The stinky duo" and right after, fresh and clean, checked in at our hostel, Lappy. Once we realized we were the only customers of the hostel, we decided to hit the streets for the night as we REALLY wanted to celebrate the first 1000 kilometers of this trip. After getting lost for a while in the city center, we decided the place to be was a yakitoriyasan (chicken skewers) called "Rock'n'roll" and, after a few beers, we made friends with the owner and a customers. Not a minute passed by and we were already all partying together, to the point where the owner told us "I'm gonna offer you the next round, but you gotta drink it regardless of what I serve you". We agreed and ended up drinking a liquor full of maggots and a liquor with a snake inside. No seriously, MAGGOTS and a SNAKE. Both of which were surprisingly delicious but, from that moment on, my memories of the night get a little foggy.. :)

The next day we woke up with a huge hangover and a bunch of great memories. We decided to hit the streets again, but this time with no intention of partying. Instead, we payed a visit to the Peace Park and the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb museum, regardless of the horrible rainy weather.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial (pretty much the only building that remained after the atomic bomb)

Outside the Atomic Bomb Museum of Hiroshima

That night, we stayed in and focused on working on the blogs / vlogs. The following day, out of the blue, we simply decided to change our plans completely, because, you know, we can! :) So instead of going straight to Tottori, we opter for a rather long detour and jumped on a ferry (yes, we were starting to miss them) to Shikoku, biked all afternoon and reached Dogo Onsen, Japan's oldest hot springs. (Hideo Miyazaki used Dogo Onsen as a model for his animation movie "Spirited Away")

The side view of Dogo Onsen and its beautiful terrace.

A customer in Yukata taking pictures of the terrace.

Right outside of the hot spings, for once clean and not awfully smelly like usual, we met Nana, a traveller from Hong Kong and we went all together in a small pub for what became a lovely night out. After which we set up the tent in Dogo Park, right under the cherry blossoms!

Cherry blossoms and the world's two laziest cyclists.

In the morning, after being woken up by an old man that apparently didn't like our tent right under the beautiful landscape he wanted to photograph, we packed up and set off to the Shimanami Kaidō, Japan's longest cycling road. Build in 1999, is a 70km long ride with separate lanes for the bikes (almost all the time) across 6 small islands between Shikoku and Honshu. We had no idea it existed until a few days earlier, when our good friend Tetsuo Hiraku got in touch with us and let us know about it... Thanks Hiraku!

The Simanami Kaidoō is seriously a dream come true for every cyclist. It was the best ride we had so far, hands down. After getting over the first bridge, we set the tent for the night and the day after we cycled it all to the end, thus reaching the small but beautiful town of Onomichi.

The sunset over the first bridge of the Shimanami Kaidō, which is over 3km long

The view of one of the other bridges of the Shimanami Kaidō

Sio on one of the cycling paths of the Shimanami Kaidō

The last bridge even had a dedicated cycling lane, UNDERNEATH it!

Sio drew the map of our progress so far.

The travel goes on...

#05 : Hiroshima, more bombs, Dogo Onsen and Japan's longest cycling road.

Nicola Bernardi