We almost skipped Rimini.
It was one night on the way south from Ferrara — somewhere to sleep before the next train. The kind of place that exists on an itinerary as a dot between two more interesting dots. We arrived in the early evening, dropped our bags, and walked straight out into it.
By midnight, neither of us wanted to leave.
The night before the walk
The beachfront in September is a different thing to what the photographs suggest. The summer crowds have thinned but not gone — the beach clubs are still open, still lit, still playing music into the warm air. We found the Bistrot del Mare strung with fairy lights along the sand, ordered drinks, and sat outside while Italy went about its Saturday evening around us.
This was the night something shifted. Not dramatically — not a conversation or a decision, more an atmosphere that got into us. The music, the heat still in the air, the particular way Italian seaside resorts feel like they belong to the people who live near them rather than the people passing through. I remember thinking: this is what it could feel like. Living close enough to this that it becomes ordinary.
That thought didn’t go away.
Morning: the old town
Strava logged us starting at 10:06am. We had already had coffee.
The old town of Rimini is not where most visitors spend their time — they come for the beach and that is where they stay. But ten minutes inland from the seafront the city becomes something else entirely: Roman stones, medieval streets, the extraordinary Ponte di Tiberio spanning the Marecchia river with arches that have been standing since 20 AD. We stood on the wooden walkway beside it in the September sun and watched the green water move underneath, slow and flat, reflecting the houses on the far bank.
The cobbled streets beyond were empty enough in the late morning that our footsteps echoed. A long straight road, bollards down the middle, the kind of quiet that happens when a city hasn’t quite woken up yet. We walked it to the end and turned back through the market square, past the Arco d’Augusto — another Roman structure, older than the bridge, still marking what used to be the end of the Via Flaminia.
Rimini has been here a very long time. It wears it lightly.
Afternoon: beach, marina, and a Ferris wheel
The second walk started at 1:50pm — 2.54 miles along the beach and out to the marina. The seafront here is extraordinary in scale: kilometres of beach clubs, each one numbered, each with its own character. Umbrellas and sun loungers arranged in perfect rows down to the waterline. In September some of the clubs are already closing for winter, plastic chairs stacked, the geometry of summer being put away.
At the harbour end we found the rainbow — RIMINI spelled out in pride colours across the concrete of the port. Beyond it, the marina itself: hundreds of masts standing still in the afternoon calm, the water green and flat. A white Ferris wheel, enormous, unmoving, three people walking past its base looking small.
We sat on the harbour wall for a while. Bought ice cream somewhere. Did not write it down and now cannot remember where, only that it was good.
Evening: the Bounty and the blue light
The third walk was short — barely a mile, late afternoon, almost accidental. We had stopped for a drink at a place called the Bounty, a beach bar that has committed fully to a pirate theme: skull flags, rope railings, a skeleton in a chair at the entrance. It should be absurd. It wasn’t. It was full of people having a genuinely good time, and the prosecco was cold, and the light was doing that thing it does in Italy in September where everything turns golden for an hour and you understand why people keep coming back.
After dark, Rimini became something else again. The modern seafront pavilion — a long, curved structure that sits at the water’s edge — lit up blue against the black sky. We watched it from above, the illuminated fountain below us throwing light in all directions. The horse fountain in the park. The fairground lights across the grass. The particular quality of Italian Saturday night that is festive without being frantic.
Sarah photographed things. I walked beside her and tried to remember all of it.
Morning: the station square
We left on the early train. The station square was quiet, the RiMini sign still there in white letters, a few travellers on benches waiting with their luggage. A small fountain running in the middle of nothing in particular.
We had walked nearly nine miles in one day, across three separate Strava logs, and we hadn’t been trying. We had just been paying attention.
On the train back north toward Ravenna I put some music on. Not to listen carefully — just to have something in my ears while the coast went past the window. I remember thinking about what it would mean to play music in a place like this. Not perform — play. For people who were already having a good time, on a warm night, somewhere near the sea.
That thought didn’t go away either.
Rimini was one night. It left two things behind: a direction of travel, and a DJ name we hadn’t found yet.
