Italy with Kids - Florence 2 and at the Campground

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23 Sept 2008

Today was Kylie's day of freedom in Florence, plus a shopping tour. She headed off early, caught the train in, and shopped around for a while. Then caught the "complete disappointment" for an afternoon of driving to two places and seeing nothing interesting. I'll leave Ky to tell you the full story.

The boys and I alternated between the heated pool, games room, playground, and a gelati or two. We took a walk along the valley to find out where the horse ranch was, the idea being to have a horse ride later in the week. After some time, and going up and down and finding some deer and an emu in paddocks, we gave up and came back.



Well, whata total disappointment the shopping tour was. Met the group in florence then what a surprise I got when our first stop was two towns from the camp. This was the Prada shop. It was tiny with boring extremely expensive stuff. We were there for an hour and a half! Next stop was two towns on the other side of the camp for "The Mall", a group of designer shops. More boring, expensive stuff to look at for nearly 3 hours. I talked to a few people from England and Australia - while the Italians and Americans bought up large. Before getting on the bus to go back I asked the driver if their was a train station close that I could walk to to save me from going back to florence then catching the train back. But no, so an extra hour and a half later got back to the camp.

The only good thing was that I found a few pressies at the markets in the morning.

On a side note, it cost me more money to use the loos today than for lunch. although I must say that they were quite easy to find, as the signs actually led to a toilet! Yippee. Rome was the smelliest, with streets smelling of urine which I think is due to the fact that there were no public toilets that we could find. My most embarrassing moment, and the funniest for the boys, is when I had to stick my butt out the car in the pouring rain to pee when all of the petrol stations were closed. Now whenever I see a toilet sign I go in as you never know if you're going to find another! Thankfully no pictures of my butt, only because Doug was driving!

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