The last post

Arrival

Date: 9 May 2025
TL;DR
Bikes lost in transit. All plans cancelled.

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The big unsolved problem on arrival in Florence was how to get ourselves and our bikes to a distant hotel after 36 hours of travel. A pre-booked van would have cost €160 for 15 km, and with our flight getting in at midnight, trains and buses weren’t an option. Luckily, our bikes weren’t on the plane – which meant we could squeeze into an ordinary taxi. What a relief for our jet-lagged selves.

Sleep overtook us. By morning, we discovered the bikes had been loaded on the Singapore–Frankfurt flight, but nothing beyond that. A revised definition of German efficiency, perhaps.

We’re in Prato, an overlooked gem just north of Florence. It has its own duomo, a 12th-century castle (used as a prison for fascists at the end of World War II), a magnificent and largely intact city wall, a textile museum (Prato was the centre of Italy’s textile industry for centuries), and an avant-garde art museum – which we won’t visit, because we’re more rear guard than avant.

The old town has the expected narrow winding streets, small interesting shops, and large piazzas lined with cafés – and, wait for it: no tourists! It’s unbelievable – an old town lived in by locals, friendly locals, unhassled locals who still inhabit their own space. Not like the Venices, Florences, and innumerable cute-but-overly-restored hilltop villages, all with their identical streets and fashion-brand stores. Last time we were in Europe, I got to the point of refusing to enter any old town boasting an Esprit store, and don’t get me started on cathedrals.

But Prato is different – real, unpretentious, and charming. I felt ashamed of myself for taking photos in public places.

The small supermarket opposite our hotel brought a flood of nostalgia – grazing the shelves for exotic and reasonably priced stuff we never see in the local Woolies, selecting ingredients for meal after memorable meal cooked in our lodgings on all those other trips. We’ve been to Italy a few times although it’s nearly seven years since our last visit, but already we feel at home – limping along with a few buongiornos and grazies, and aching to get back on the road.

But in the meantime I am an old man on his feet, wondering what we’ll do if the airlines can’t find our bikes. The boxes are huge – how can they lose them? We have often struggled with Day One on our longer tours and it’s become our shorthand for anything that goes wrong and escalates, but this is too much, and there will be no more posts until we have bikes under our bums once more.

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