June 6, 2023 to June 7, 2023
To Milan / Vancouver
We started our Tuscan tour a little over a month ago with what looked to be a daunting list of towns in Italy to visit. Day by day the list got whittled down until we reached the end. We found ourselves on the lovely Ligurian coast and now it's time to begin the long trip back home. Our travel back to Canada will take two days. Today will be a couple of train rides back to the airport hotel in Milan and tomorrow will be a long day with a couple of flights back to Vancouver.
We started with breakfast at the Hotel Delle Rose and we again enjoyed overlooking the Bay of Bonassolo. After loading the panniers on our bikes for the last time, we rode back through the railway tunnels to the train station in Levanto. A single train without any connections took us from Levanto to Milan. There were a number of stops as we headed along the coast to Genoa before turning north to Milan.
When our train arrived into the Levanto station we searched frantically for the car with the bike symbol on the side of it to show us where to stow our bikes. Not seeing a bike symbol on the cars that passed us we headed for the far end of the train and still did not find a bike car. We knew that we needed to just get on and sort it out later. At the last car, we loaded our bikes into the area between a passenger car and engine car and found ourselves a couple of seats that turned out to be in the first class car. We now realized that when buying our tickets we needed to put more of an effort into identifying seat locations. We just bought the tickets as if it would be a ¨festival seating¨ type arrangement like the regional trains. Clearly we were not in our assigned seats and eventually someone would want to claim them or maybe we would just get lucky. Not likely.
Soon the train attendant arrived and upon seeing our bikes in between the cars said they needed to be moved to Car #3 where there is a bike rack. A stop or two down the line we took them off the train and placed them correctly in the rack. Now checking out our ¨assigned seats¨ in Car #4 we found that they were already occupied. The 2nd class car was packed with people and bags and not looking too comfortable after having tried the first class seating. We did manage to find a couple of open seats in another car for the remainder of our ride to Milan Central and the three hour journey was quite pleasant.
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The regional train that would take us to Gallarate near the Milan airport departed from Milan`s Garibaldi station - just a short ride from Milan`s central station. We were familiar with the Garibaldi Station as we had gone through there when we took a day trip to Milan a month ago.
We arrived back in Gallarate a little after 4pm, well before the bar near the train station where we have had a beer previously was opened. So we carried on and stopped to pick up some groceries for a snack and our breakfast at a local super market. We then headed back to our hotel along some familiar and some not so familiar looking streets. We have ridden this route four times now and never the same way twice! The delayed celebratory beer was enjoyed on the pool deck of our hotel which we both agreed was a great spot even if it was the most expensive beer we had purchased on our entire trip.
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There were no restaurants near our airport hotel so we walked down the street to have a pizza - the place had good reviews and provided a perfect neighbourhood experience. A coke, a beer and a prosciutto and fungi pizza to share. Back to our room to finish packing and travel day one was done.
Travel day two started with a prebooked 09:00 shuttle to the airport. Everything at the airport went smoothly - check-in, bag drop, security check, passport control and gate finding all took a bit a time so we were happy to be there early and still have lots of time for our morning coffees. Nice not to rush is Pat`s motto.
We had a row of four seats for just the two of us on the Milan to Montreal flight, so lots of room to spread out, but we were on a 100% full flight to Vancouver. Not as much fun. We travelled on schedule but our bags did not. This is really of no concern to us. We like not having to lug the bikes and gear around and instead have them delivered to our door the next day!
It was a long day with over 20 hours of travel to get home. After five weeks on the road it was nice to be home. We love our cycling tours but we also like to come home. We find the relatively short length of our tours to be just about right. We will be anxious to head back to Europe again for more cycling after the summer. Thank you to everyone that has been following our trip, your comments and support mean a lot to us. We plan to complete a summary / trip report in the next few days.
Scott and Pat
Today's ride: 4 km (2 miles)
Total: 883 km (548 miles)
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