We’ve arrived in Italy.

When You start on these adventures, at least for me, I find it difficult to see myself at the end, or the home stretch. And seeing the end in sight is a reminder of how far we’ve come.

We hopped on the ferry at 8am sharp. Which means, to us, that we left our apartment at approx. 6:45am to ride the 5 minute down hill stretch to the ferry to arrive at the requested 1hour prior to sailing time.

The streets were quiet and dark at 6:45 as we, as the airbnb owner said, “KLACK” the door shut. We were greeted by the refuse collector and his buggy as he did his rounds to the various garbage cans, and of course the street sweeper that wet and swept the cigarette butts and dog poop (and urine) from the streets.

We presented ourselves to the walk on security only to be told to go out and wait with the cars as we were considered cars. Which was weird because when we came to Corsica, we were considered “walk ins” and treated like a pedestrian.

Waiting in traffic for the ferry.

There were cars, vans, trucks and semis all waiting (im)patiently for the ferry to unload and then reload.

A 5 hour ferry to the mainland, Italy.

the sailing was smooth and uneventful.

Riding on the Road

When we disembarked from the ferry we had a route all planned to get us to Pisa. The only thing was that we had to get out of the industrial centre of Livorno. Trucks, delivery vans and ferry traffic all of them seemingly knowing where they were going.

Us not so much!

We had to zoom across several lanes of traffic and deek around parked cars.

At one point I stopped and told Bob that we had to get to the far exit at the farthest round about. “See where that red car is going? I asked, “that’s where we want to go”.

There was a steady stream of traffic and we were waiting to pull out when there was a clear 3second window.

Then I saw this cyclist,

no hi viz jacket,

no helmet

dark hoodie

pass us and head straight into the round about.

no care in the world about holding up traffic or that he was in anyone’s way.

As he did, he let go of the handlebars with both hands and flung up the hood of his hoody and zipped it up.

and kept going

i, as best as possible followed him.

thinking…. Well if he can do it with no hands then I can certainly do it.

and we did.

and we made it through and on to the safety of the bike path that lead us right into the heart of Pisa.

Bike path, an old rail line I expect, right into the centr of Pisa.

Getting to the Airbnb

we had a safe ride and with 2km left to the day we were feeling energized. The weather was geat and we were completing our first day in Italy!.

As normal for us, we switched from Komoot to google maps for the final few kms. All seemed to be going according to plan until google maps advised us to “use the pedestrian tunnel”.

Said tunnel was at the Pisa train station and connected the pedestrians safely under 5 rows of train platforms.

The tunnel did have several stairs. And a skinny ramp to allow cyclists to push their bike up/down the ramp. With our luggage we couldn’t safely roll our bikes on the ramp,

so,

We opted to go around which included going back into afternoon traffic and over the bridge over the train tracks.

Arriving at out Airbnb