---
title: 'Florence Without a Map'
date: '2026-09-07'
location_name: Florence
location_country: Italy
lat: 43.769
lng: 11.255
hero_image: hero.jpg
hero_alt: Arno river at midday with Ponte Vecchio, ochre buildings reflected in still water
published: true
---

No route today. No GPS, no distance target, no reason to be anywhere by any particular time. After six days of forward motion this felt almost wrong — the instinct to check the elevation profile arriving at nothing. We put the bikes in the hotel basement and walked out into Florence on foot.

[chapter-break image="hero.jpg" title="Day Seven" number="VII" alt="Arno river and Ponte Vecchio from Ponte Santa Trinita at midday" /]

[snap-gallery images="hero.jpg,photo-1.jpg" captions="The Arno at noon — greener than expected, the bridges older than you remember,Via dei Servi: washing lines, shutters, a cat on a warm stone ledge that had been warm since morning" alts="Arno river with Ponte Vecchio reflected in still water at midday,Narrow Florence street with laundry strung between buildings" /]

[pull-quote]
Cycling makes you earn every city you arrive at. Florence, we got for free. It felt like a gift and a debt simultaneously.
[/pull-quote]

[scrolly-section image="photo-1.jpg" alt="Narrow Oltrarno street in afternoon light" caption="Oltrarno, 14:00"]
The Uffizi had a queue that stretched around two corners and disappeared into a side street. We looked at it for a moment and went to find coffee instead. This felt correct.

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A covered market in the Oltrarno that nobody had told us about. A man selling leather goods from a table he clearly reassembled each morning from identical components. A small dog sleeping under a fruit stall in a precisely calculated patch of shade.

---

We crossed the Ponte Vecchio at two in the afternoon, which is exactly the wrong time to cross the Ponte Vecchio, and it was still worth it. The light off the Arno at that hour is genuinely extraordinary and all the photographs in the world do not prepare you for it.
[/scrolly-section]

Dinner near the apartment, early. Feet sore in a different way from legs sore — a smaller, more concentrated complaint. Tomorrow: the last day. The coast road home.
