Italy

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PISA

On the way to Florence we stop in Pisa for us all to take our classic ‘silly’ photos and wonder around town. Tower as a lot bigger than I imagined.


FLORENCE

mmmmm… leather & gelato!!

So how surreal? We go from playing in the snow one day to sweating our goose bumps off in 40 degree heat in Florence - but oh it’s good!! We get some sleep on the bus during the day - a long day again of travel - and arrive to a scrumptious traditional Italian meal at our Tuscan Hills Resort. This resort is HUGE! It has everything… camping, cabins, restaurants, bars, pools, bars, gelati - we really don’t need to leave the resort. We are warned heavily about how bad pick pocketers are in Italy and we are all scared out of out wits.

Heading onto our handbags, next day we head into the heart of Florence, I really loved Florence, very quaint! We have a walking tour through the town, a leather demonstration; oh the temptation to buy something begins. I manage to go the whole day without any major purchase until the last stall I walk past on the way home, where my beautiful leather brown satchel calls out to me, ‘I’m yours, buy me’…. He’s too cute so I bargain for him, his mine.. all mine!! The heat and walking is exhausting… we all head to see the famous ‘David’ statue, I was really impressed, a lot bigger than I imagined, but best of all I get to sit and stare at his bottom as the air conditioners are well placed…. I sit there long enough for Bahti and Aimz to talk me into climbing the 416 steps up the bell tower for the beautiful Tuscan view. We are the only 3 out of the group that do it… we climb, we sweat, we crawl, we sweat, we stop for rest, we climb, we keep going and going, oh it’s a major effort, but as I reach the top and try and get some air into my lungs, I stare out and it’s all worth it. We find the nearest place that sells cold drinks with ice and sit down for a rest. Spend the rest of the day wondering around and doing some shopping. On the way back to the bus we find some a spot on the river where we can cool our feet and Bahti (our token Indian/English fun girl) falls on her ass and provides us with a good laugh ;-)

We head back to the resort and have a nice cold shower, refresh ourselves for dinner and have a really nice dinner and a few bottles of wine… perfect! We finish off the night dancing silly downstairs in the dodgy blue light disco club and helping Mary-Anne crawl back to her cabin whilst being told by security guards to stop laughing a be quiet, LOL. Mary-Anne wakes up with a big bruise on her bum cheek and wonders where it came from, LOL. We are also abused by some foreign arrogant man you swears obscenities next to our cabin - how rude!!! It’s awesome, we also discover that they don’t measure drinks in Europe - it’s free pour…. Dangerous!

We wake up the next morning, Hayden is still really drunk and won’t shut up on the bus when everyone else is trying to sleep - he doesn’t last long and crashes for remainder of the day, phew!!

All roads lead to ROME.

Our journey to Rome we stopped off at a little town called ‘Orvieto’, cool little historic town, had lunch with a great view and then it was back on the bus to Rome. Again really hot, the whole time in Italy was scorching. We arrive right in the heart of Rome and start a walking tour through the city, see the Spanish Steps, the Trevi fountain, monk tombs, which was very eerie, all of their bones decorate the place. After a few hours of walking, we’re all pretty exhausted, we head back to the campsite, similar to Florence - couldn’t wait to have a shower! We eat LJ’s yummy lasagna in the dark and it’s a very sad night as we say farewell to the delirious Sydney fun girls - very depressing!! Throughout the tour there are 3 sets of 5 people that join the tour for 7 days at different times and the Sydney girls are some of them….talk about play with your emotions. Say hi to YA MUM for me!!

Next morning bright and early to make the most of our free day in Rome, we first head to Vatican City, the Sistine chapel, St.Peter’s Basilica. It took ages to actually work our way through the Vatican. Sistine chapel was nice, dare I say…. Not as good as I thought it was going to be, but pretty cool. Then Bahti, Aimz, Kate, Ali and myself hunt down an air conditioned restaurant and have a yummy lunch and relax for a while. Then we decide the Colleseum is next, all psyched up for it after watching Gladiator on the way to Rome on the bus - exciting!! The Colleseum was awesome, my favorite part of the day, it’s absolutely massive and hard to believe that so much blood was shed here for entertainment value! After doing all of our Gladiator poses we head to a café for a latte and head on in search of some lilos for our arrival in Greece the next day. We found some cool lilos and headed back to the campsite for a hard earned swim to cool off and lay poolside. Tonight we could do what we wanted for dinner, 4 of us girls went to inner and feeling low on energy thought I would order a steak (very expensive steak), it was not long after this that I really started to feel unwell, had no energy what so ever, nearly fell asleep in my dinner I didn’t eat and just made it back to the cabin about 8.30pm and went to bed. Apparently I missed one of the best party nights on tour (of course I did), found this out when I was awoken by 2 drunken fun girls (Kate & Aimee) at 2:30am, giggling their heads off. Hadn’t been feeling great for a few days but feel a little better the next morning for getting some extra sleep. Some of the lads went on a pub crawl the night before, must have been a good night because my cabin was a rockin half way through the night…. Thanks Jake!

SAILING AND SUN HERE WE COME!

After Croatia we head back to Italy again... Venice infact!

YA MUM’s A GONDOLA!!

We arrive in Venice after our adventure in Slovenia. Another cool campsite with all the goods. Started to feel a little homesick today believe it or not, he he. We have dinner and get ourselves ready for our TOGA PARTAY!! So much fun…. Big night, still wearing our toga’s at 4am, considering they’re sheets, I actually consider whether I need to take it off for bed, but considering I have beer spilt all over it maybe I should.

Next day is our day to head into Venice town, we are all feeling very hungover and tired and it’s another scorcher. We have a walking tour around town, St.Mark’s Square & basilica, Grand Canal. We stop for a bit whilst a few of us rush off to the loo before our Gondola ride. Only to find that when we return from the loo our entire group has disappeared. There are thousands of people around, not easy to find our fun friends, we run the whole way down the strip we are on, then turnaround and decide to try and phone someone, we phone Kate who surprisingly answers and tells us that there all the way back in the square, so we bolt (remember this is hungover and we’re only just keeping everything down) all the way back to the group, where Kate then tells us that our Gondola ride appointment had been postponed so we didn’t need to make a run for it in the first place!! It probably took us an hour to catch our breath, felt really fit, LOL, started wondering why o why did I drink so much the night before. So what do we do to kill time before our Gondola ride, only one answer - Macca’s, yep of course there’s golden arches in Venice.

We then made our way over for our very long awaited Gondola ride. These guys make an absolute fortune. When the Sydney girls were there they paid about 150 euros, luckily our Candace was well organized and we only paid around 18 euro each. After our nice relaxing gondola ride we set off for wondering around the streets and find ourselves a nice little restaurant for a coffee and the girls to have lunch. It’s very easy to get lost in this town, the whole place is surrounded by water and canals, it actually floods quite regularly and each year the water rises ever so much. So in many years to come who knows what Venice may look like. We get a water taxi back to the bus and go back for a relaxing night by the cabin drinking wine and eating cheese. It shocks me that the are mosquito’s absolutely everywhere and we spend half the night trying to swat them to a bloody death. It is absolutely bucketing down with rain!

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Photos

Bell Tower - Florence
Yep, climbed to the top in 42 degree heat - hungover and all.