Detour to the Riviera

 Bali Hai was full on — guests arriving and leaving, cleaning, audits, and the constant hum of responsibility. And then, one ordinary afternoon, the phone rang. 

It was Carolyn, calling from Austria. Her voice carried the same spark as have I remembered. 

She told me she’d been working with Phillip in Munich. 

Fresh from his engineering degree in 1986, Phillip had thrown himself into Europe with the same determination he’d shown back home. 

He had stumbled into an unlikely niche: delivering futon beds for two Australians who were manufacturing them in Germany. What started with a single van quickly grew into a small fleet. Soon he was running a tidy transport business, hauling futons all over Europe. Carolyn had joined him for a while, but she had a hunger for variety and struck out into hospitality. That’s how she ended up in Austria, working a winter season.

We chatted about her travels, her work, and then — almost offhand — she mentioned a plan to do a bicycle tour. 

My ears pricked up immediately. 

That was something I had always wanted to try. 

We agreed then and there: in May, we’d meet and ride together.

In the end, the tour wasn’t exactly where we’d first imagined, but it was glorious all the same. I bought myself a Cannondale mountain bike, started training through the winding trails of Noosa’s national parks, and rediscovered something I hadn’t felt in a long while — that pure, childlike joy of movement, of being outside with no demands but the open road ahead.

That ride with Carolyn reminded me that life could still hold fresh adventure, even in the middle of business stress and personal shadows.

 For a while, I carried that spark back with me to Bali Hai.

 It was a small reminder — but an important one — that the world was larger than my daily worries. 

 Detour to the Riviera: A Ride Unplanned 

We had planned carefully: Munich to Bologna by train, then onward to Bari with our bikes, and from there to explore southern Italy. 

But plans rarely survive contact with reality.

Our trouble began in Bologna. 

We rolled our bikes off the German train easily, but when we tried to board the Italian railway southward, we hit a brick wall — bicycles were not allowed on their trains. 

The first available cargo train to Bari wasn’t for another five days. 

We didn’t have the time, nor the patience, to sit around waiting.

It was early May, and Bologna was alive with traffic, cold, and the sharp edges of a bustling city.

 Carolyn and I stood outside the station, unsure what to do. 

The thought crept in: maybe we should just ride out of the city and begin our adventure from there.

So, with my best attempt at conversational Italian, I stopped a policewoman who had just finished directing traffic. I asked — more than once, in different ways — how to cycle out of Bologna. She listened patiently, then finally raised an eyebrow and said, in perfect English: “Do you speak English?”

So much for my Italian lessons back in Noosa.

She explained that regardless of which direction we rode, we’d have to go through the mountains. In early May, the passes would be far too dangerous for us, especially weighed down with gear. That was that.

In the end, we came up with a mad solution: we arranged to have our bikes shipped by cargo train to Genoa, due to arrive in just 48 hours. 

When they arrive, we can set off — not south, as we’d planned, but west. 

And that was how we ended up riding from Genoa along the Italian and French Rivieras, winding through sparkling coastal roads into Provence. 

For just over three weeks, we rode under Mediterranean skies, our carefully laid plans forgotten, our days unfolding one pedal stroke at a time.

 The road gave us seaside cafés, cobbled villages, and long stretches where the horizon was nothing but blue.

But travel is never only sunshine. 

By the time we reached Nice, the weather turned. The skies closed in, and the rain lingered — four heavy days of it. Cycling in that was impossible.

Fortunately, I had bought us rail passes. 

With a shrug and a smile, we organized with accommodation owners where we were staying to store our bikes until we returned and then boarded a train to Florence & Rome.

For those wet days, we traded coastlines for culture: Florence, with its Renaissance splendor; Rome, and the Vatican City eternal and chaotic. 

Cities we hadn’t intended to see opened themselves to us in ways we could never have scripted.

When the skies cleared, we returned to our bicycles as if nothing had changed — though of course, something had. We carried a little of Florence, Rome & The Vatican with us into the days that followed, a reminder that sometimes the best journeys are the ones we never meant to take.

Closing Reflection Looking back, that ride taught me something I hadn’t expected to learn from a bicycle: that detours aren’t failures, they’re often the real journey. 

The Riviera, Florence, Rome — none of it was planned, yet it all became part of our story. 

Life, I’ve come to see, rarely unfolds the way we expect, but if you’re willing to keep pedalling — and sometimes let the train carry you — the road has a way of giving you exactly what you need.