Urbanus Magnus

On Friday we flew in to Florence, after a 7-hour flight from Toronto to Frankfurt, and then a short 2 hour commuter jet brought us into the Gallileo Gallilei airport of Florence. Understandably we were slighty worried about how well our bicycles fared in the flight - or if they even followed us to Italy in the cargo hold of the plane. However, everything went smoothly and our bicycles survived undamaged - likely due to our "leave them no chances to break something" approach to packing them. It took us a little over and hour and a half to unpack the bikes again and move all our equipment from the duffel bags to our panniers, and then off we went. But very slowly, due to the narrower italian roads and zippy cars scooting about haphazardly. Our babies - they are ok! All packed and loaded on the way from the airport to the hotel. Although initially scary and seemingly devoid of order, we have come to find that Florentine roads have polite and highly skil...

This is the [very long] packing list of all the items that we are going to be bringing with us to Italy for our trip (other than our two bicycles, of course). All the items on the list are the totals for both of us combined, unless otherwise noted as per person (p.p.). Extra heavy or bulky equipment like the chain to lock up our bikes, will be bought in Italy once we arrive. Clothing (p.p.) 1 pair light cotton trousers 1 pair cotton shorts 2 pairs cycling shorts 3 pairs underwear 2 cycling jerseys 2 T-shirts 3 pairs socks 1 botton-up/nice long sleeved shirt 1 waterproof riding jacket 1 cycling cap 1 helmet 1 pair cycling gloves - only for Dad 1 pair light pajamas 1 pair running shoes 1 pair walking shoes – Dad buying his overseas Personals/Toiletries Toothbrushes 1 tube toothpaste Contact lenses Lens cases and solution 2 pairs sunglasses - and regular glas...

In Italy, we hope to cut our costs down somewhat by cooking as many of our meals as possible. But, the availability of stove fuels is somewhat different that North America, meaning that choosing a stove is a little hard. White gas (camping fuel), and the standard EN417-threaded butane canisters so plentiful here are quite scant in most of Europe - Italy included. Across the pond, Campingaz' dominance in the market means that its own proprietary canisters are ubiquitous throughout much of the continent, to the chagrin of many tourists, who won't have much luck finding EN417 butane canisters for their stoves in all but the largest cities in Italy.* *Update: We have completed our tour of Italy, and in fact did not have too much difficulty locating the EN417-threaded canisters.  We purchased our refill at an odd little "Liquigas" shop in Siena, a chain which appears to be unique to Italy. There are more of these shops, and so our advice would be to start the search the...