Florence

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Buon Giorno,

We left Venice/Mestre bright and early and decided t take the back road through Ravenna. Boy these italians are cards on the road. I have worked out the following optionals for Italian driving:
1. Speed limits. Only if you feel like it
2. Only one car per lane- unless you are overtaking and a truck comes the other way and you need to get back on the right side of the road; in which case it is ok to push your way in and share the lane with the car you are overtaking
3. Unbroken centre lines mean no overtaking - unless you have no traffic coming the other way for about 50 metres in which case it's ok to overtake. If you get into trouble see option # 2.

Today was a day of highlights.

The first was the Italian Carbinari waving us over to stop and demanding to see our licence & rego. I didn't understand at first and muttered something intelligent like "I don'yt speak English". I think i got away with it though. Then while this very officious cop who you just knew preens himself in the mirror every morning marvelling at how wonderful and sexy he looks in his uniform, looked at our documents, this other stooge cop stood in front of the car with a machine gun!!!!!!! No kidding. They looked at our documents and discussed them (we think they couldn't understand them) for a couple of minutes and then said one word: "Bye"
Luckily i was wearing my brown corduroy trousers. 😊

We called in at Lido Dell Scacchi north of Ravenna and had a little walk along the beach. This area is a kind of cross between the Gold Coast and Windale. These massive holiday units sit right on the beach and actually own an area about 50 metres in front where they put up giant marquees in the season.
We are staying at the most extraordinary B&B on a hill overlooking Florence. It's about 25 mins walk to the city. Liz will fill you in on details.
The second highlight was when we went to the toilet at Lido dell Sc. When i finished the toilet seat started to mysteriously rotate clockwise and began to distort into a kind of amoebic circular shape and a device descended from the cistern and wrapped itself over the now spinning seat. This was the world's first ever self-cleaning toilet seat. And we had to go to a small town in Italy to see it. And then....... to get the paper towel, the end of which had disappeared up inside the dispenserm you put your hand over the dispenser edge and magically a clinically determined length of paper towell was dispensed. I was so impressed could have spent hours there and it was free!!!!!!!

Back at Venice i had the most annoying experience i think i can remember. I had to pay 1 Euro to take a pee at Venice. There are certain inalienable rights that we enjoy in Australia and one of them is being able to take a pee for free. The other is free air for your tyres. I hereby give notice that my bladder has gone on strike in protest and will no longer pay for the privilege of spending a penny.

The day yesterday was just magic. we must have spent about 5 hours on the water. You can pay 14 euros for a 12 hour pass. And the ferries go everywhere. The highlight for me was seeing the old naval and commercial shipping areas which underpinned the economic capacity of Venice which permitted the cultural flourishing. The day was a highlight of the tour... and one of the best value things we have done. Highly recommended. The ferries themselves are great over powered relics of a previous age. When we first got on i was reminded of my days as a bus conductor on the old crash gear box double deckers in sydney. And i swear i hear the captain double shuffle the gears. The captains themselves were all trained at the Bart Simpson school of ferry navigation and steering. As we approached each wharf it was a case of "woo hoo how hard can i hit the wharf to see how far back we can make the ferry bounce?"

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