Day 0 | 28 APRIL 2026: The plan was to escape Cape Town's winter. We would max out my three-month Schengen visa in Italy, sit out August in non-EU Albania, and get home in time for the spring flowers. Only, the Cape storms never materialised, the spring flowers never bloomed and we sweated through the hottest summer ever recorded in Western Europe. Vedi Napoli e poi muori. "See Naples and then die", say the Italians. We, however, lived to tell the tale.