I got back from a two week trip to Italy ending in Ducati World Week at Misano. We landed in Rome and spent two full days seeing the sites. My wife was freaking out at watching all the scooter drivers in traffic filtering in front of our taxi. It is unbelievable watching the scooters and automobiles in traffic with no incidents. All The Gear All the Time does not apply to scooter riders. Men in shorts and women in dresses with stiletto heals with no jacket and no gloves and only a helmet are the norm. After two days we took the train to Florence or as the Italians call it Firenze. We picked up our Multistrada rental bikes from Central Italian Motorcycle Tours, CIMT. Even with our Cardo comm devices my friend and I got split up going back to our apartment. It was every man for himself and we somehow wound up back at the apartment and asked CIMT for a GPS for navigating the towns. On our first full day we took a wrong turn, no GPS, and wound up halfway to Bologna instead of Pisa. After we got going the right way we went to Pisa and saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa. On the way back to Florence my friend and I discovered the benefit of a motorcycle on the Autostrada when traffic came to screeching halt. Some local riders passed us on what we call the shoulder. We said lets do like the locals and soon we passed miles of cars on the shoulder. On another day we also went to the lovely town of Siena, now GPS supplied, traveling through the wine country of Tuscany. We also went to the Galleria dell Academia in Florence to see Michelangelo's statue of David. Of course we went to Bologna and took a tour of the Ducati factory and museum. We saw every line of Ducatis in production up to the point to where they are crated. The museum is awesome with bikes from past world champions like Bayliss, Stoner, Fogarty, Corser, Hodgson, Checa and Polen. It was great to see that the factory had one of Nicky Hayden's bikes on display. They also had bikes like the Ducati 750 Paso, 851, and 1993 Monster as well as many other historical race and road bikes. Going to Ducati World Week we picked a route over the Futa pass that had curve after curve in a forest. Good quality roads with lots of fast bikes, riders, and cars. Cornering discipline is a must otherwise some person in a high performance car may take you out. We also stopped at top of the pass at Cavallino which had a small restaurant that overlooks the mountains and forest. As we sat down to eat the owner had music playing and American artists like Bob Dylan and others were heard. Then it was back down the mountains to the autostrada connecting Bologna and Misano. We stayed in Cattolica which is on the Adriatic sea. Cattolica is the home of Marco Simoncelli. The beach was great and the water was a nice break from the intense heat that was present every day of our trip to Italy. After checking in we headed to the Misano Circuit Marco Somoncelli. Because of the heat we removed our riding gear and only wore shorts and shirt, running shoes and helmet and gloves. It felt so darned good! Do to security concerns we had to remove our helmets and show our passes for bike, passenger, and rider. Those were previously ordered. For non Europeans it was free other than a 30 Euro shipping cost. I have never attended Sturgis but this is what Sturgis must look like. Ducatis of every model and description from all over Europe and I guess a Chinese couple came on Multistrada Enduros in seven days. Ducati had a wall of death with Scramblers, a Multistrada Enduro off road training academy and vendors from Termignoni and Dainese and others. It was just like drinking water from a fire hose. And this was only Friday which ended in a ride from the Misano track through the streets of Rimini and Cattolica. Ducati CEO Claudio Domenicali and World Superbike Champion Carlos Checa participated in the ride. If Friday was more than you could imagine Saturday was like LA freeway gridlock. We started filtering through traffic between the white line and the cars down the middle of the road just to get to the track. At the track bikes were lined up handlebar to handlebar waiting to get in at 1000 AM in the morning. There were far more bikes on Saturday than Friday. We had to park behind the grandstands. The fans were treated to a Race of Champions race where 12 participants like Dovi, Lorenzo, Miller, Milandri, Pirro and crowd favorite Bayliss raced identically prepared Panigale V4s. Fans were also treated to a flyover of the Italian Air Force precision team that left red, white, and green smoke out as they passed overhead. Michele Piro won! 49 year old Baliss had times that were competitive but he went off track and finished behind. Due to us leaving on Monday we had to return to Florence and miss day three. By the way over 92,000 people attended Ducati World Week a new record. Ducati World Week and a trip to Bologna to see the factory and museum are a must. Riding a Ducati on Italian roads is awesome. Having to behave myself back in the US and not being able to filter and pass long lines of cars on a freeway is hard to do once you have experienced Europe. If you can access the SOCO DOG Facebook site I posed some of my pictures. Here is a link to a quick video of Ducati World Week.
One of the best things with regard to motorcycles in Italy is that unlike the US, Harley Davidsons are like Ducatis in the US, you don't see many of them and that suited me just fine.
In all a great trip and I want to go back and see some things we missed and there are many more roads to ride. This was a definite memory maker.
https://www.ducati.com/ww/en/news/record-attendance-10-edition-wdw
