Nice & Florence

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Short flight from Barcelona to Nice - got a taxi with a driver who spoke very little English. He was trying to tell us something in French about the place we needed to go - clever Georgia worked out that he was saying cars could not enter the street and we would have to walk a little bit. Our hostel was rather dodgy...for starters, it was in a completely separate building (a good 500 metres from the main hostel building). We had a fridge and a kitchenette in our room (with private ensuite) but no towels or doona / blanket...just a sheet. Anyway, we weren't too worried - you had to get through three locked doors to get to our room so we felt pretty secure. A shame we couldn't have more time in Nice - we didn't get to the hostel until after 8pm and had to be at the airport by 11am the following morning for a flight to Bologna. Found a busy little restaurant just around the corner for tea - asked for two glasses of Rose (or so we thought) and were given a 1/2 litre bottle of red wine...was very nice though and we drank it without question or complaint. 😊 😊
Had to listen to a French couple arguing out on the street for a good hour or so, in the wee hours of Thursday morning. Was very tempted to use my translate app to learn how to say "shut the f@*k up" in French, but I just wanted to try and sleep! Showered, packed, checked out and back at the airport before 11am. Weather was beautiful in the lovely coastal city - we wished there was time to see more. Oh well - off we went to Florence, via Bologna, via Copenhagen... yep :/
Our back packs are getting very heavy now - too much shopping!! Even though we are suffering with the weight, it's still hard to walk passed all the beautiful things... and now that we're in Italy!
Our hostel is like a five star resort (compared to where we stayed in Nice). Big modern room with our own bathroom, excellent wifi, all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet and free outdoor pool!! We keep winning with the weather - first day in Florence was 26 and sunny 😊 😊
Got up early and walked over to the Gallerie dell'Accademia - got to see Michelangelo's statue of David (in all his glory...if you know what I mean). Some of the postcards and souvenirs you can get are hilarious!! E.g. postcards with close up images of David's junk (wearing sunglasses of course), saying "ciao"! Lol 😊 😊
There were sooooo many people in Florence! Tourist rage started kicking in again. We tried to get all the site-seeing stuff done during the day on Friday, as Saturday was likely to be mayhem! It's a relatively small town so we pretty much just walked everywhere - best part about all the exercise is we feel free to eat whatever we want!! Around the corner to our next stop - Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore. We took the 414 stairs to the top of the bell tower - do not recommend this to anyone who is remotely claustrophobic. By the time we got back down, it was quite warm outside, so we decided to treat ourselves with some gelato from a nearby Lindt shop - yummo!!
More walking around including a visit to the Ponte Vecchio (oldest bridge in Florence) on the Arno river. Early dinner and early night...again. Sorry my posts aren't more scandalous (if that's what people were expecting) - i.e. drunken nights out filled with random experiences. We've been doing so much walking around, including an unimaginable amount of stairs (which is apparently standard for Europe) - we are just too tired!!
Last bit of site-seeing tomorrow morning then off to Lucca on the train, for a few relaxing nights with Dad and Dominica. Cannot wait!!!

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