It starts today (May 9) in San Lorenzo al Mare on the Ligurian coast in the northwest of Italy

and ends in Milan 3 weeks later after covering about 3500 km.

During its journey it touches some of the most interesting places in Italy. And just about everything it touches becomes colored pink.
I am referring, of course, to the Giro d’Italia, one of the famous Grand Tour bicycle races, and this year is its 98th running. To tell you the truth I am not much of a fan of bike racing and you might wonder why I am posting a blog devoted to it. The answer is that this year Castiglione della Pescaia-“my town”-has been selected as the place for the end of the 7th stage, which starts in Montecatini Terme, so the whole circus will come to town on Thursday coming.

A major sponsor of the race is the Gazzetta dello Sport (http://www.gazzetta.it/), the pink-colored daily sport newspaper which, together with the color of the winner’s jersey being pink, probably is the reason why pink is the color of all things that are associated with the race. Gradually all the restaurants, bars and shops in CDP are dressing themselves up in pink artifacts and the town is taking on a definite pinkish shade.
It turns out that towns selected as finishing places are not done so at random as they pay €300,000 for the privilege. I suppose the idea is that the race will bring thousands of team members, fans and tourists who will presumably leave a lot of euros in the pockets of the commercial establishments in town and then the city will take the tax hat around to extract its share while hoping that their investment pays a good dividend, let us hope.
Look out for more on this subject later as the race comes into town.