DAY 16

Sunday 6th July 2008 7:48am Florence

I am sitting in the lobby of the Hotel Mediterraneo after having breakfast in the hotel restaurant. There seem to many tour groups here and so breakfast was a bit of a bun fight. There was heaps of food, but getting to the buffet was a bit of an obstacle course. For the first time on this trip we encountered older large Americans.

Last night we had a buffet dinner in the same restaurant. I had an entrée of tortellini pasts, then chicken and vegetables for main, and a pastry and creamy lasagna type dessert. I had one glass of white wine. We sat with the three people from New Zealand Don, Lyn and Hayley and also Michael and Tim from the Philippines. It is interesting to see how Michael and Tin eat Western food. They seem to just lump it all together on one plate, then have soup or the dessert first. It’s weird.

After dinner Michael and I walked along the River Arno. It is not a really clean looking river and the banks are littered with rubbish and not kept neat. Groups of gypsies seem to camp along there. We went into a little junky souvenir market run by Africans. That too looked really scungy and I wonder if they actually live there. For the first time since arriving in Italy the evening air felt cool.

We returned to the Hotel where Trevor and Jacqui were waiting for us to have drinks. We went into the Hotel bar that looked really nice. Steve and Denise joined us and I had a sparkling white wine while we talked about our day.

Today we will see the Leaning Tower of Pisa and then travel on to Monaco and Nice.

6/7/08 11:10am Pisa

Visiting Pisa was interesting. At only 10:00am on a Sunday morning and already the tourists swarmed the place. The tower is nicely situated in a large square alongside a cathedral and a dome. It was impossible to avoid stepping in front of people with cameras and everywhere people were doing the silly pose pretending to hold up the leaning tower. One silly Asian lady was actually pushing instead of supporting as she was either trying to be ironic or she didn’t get it. We didn’t take any of those photos.

There were beautiful details above the doors; some engraved, others embossed, and other in mosaics. We walked along the souvenir stalls and bought a leather handbag for me and a belt for Greg. It was hot and sunny in the square. The Africans were there with their portable goods for sale and when the carboneri arrived they scattered like seagulls, only to set up again around the corner.

We are now back on the bus on the way to France.

6/7/08 11:48am

Leaving Tuscany we are now in Ligoria having just passed the marble mines of Carrara. The scenery is nice along here with houses and towns dotting the surrounding hillsides. The motorway is following the valley where farms grow crops, trees line waterways, and the electricity cables cross the landscape. We are following the Cinque Terre bust inland from the coast; the motorway cuts through the mountains via tunnels. Every now and then we get a glimpse of the sea and the charming houses clustered in groups along the coast.

6/7/08 2.11pm

Eduardo put his foot down passing through the numerous tunnels past the resort towns on the coast. At our lunch stop we ate vegetable lasagna, rolls, and espresso coffee. It is raining slightly with low grey clouds but still very warm. Someone said it was 9°C in Sydney. Federrer plays Nadal in the 2008 Wimbledon Final today.

6/7/08 3:30pm France

We just crossed the border between Italy and France which on this road is halfway through a tunnel. We are now on the Cote d”Azur. La belle époque. We are in the region of Provence. We come around the hill and voila – Monaco. Every part of this tiny principality have buildings on it. White cruise ships sit on the beach. High rise buildings seem to grow out of this little pocket of land.

Now we have to forget our Italian niceties and change to French.

6/7/08 10:10pm Nice

We are waiting for our bags to be delivered to our hotel room at the Boscolo Park Hotel in Nice. A long day meant that we have only just arrived. I have showered and washed the clothes I was wearing and now I’m waiting for our bags so that I can hand wash some more clothes. I have one pair of clean knickers left and Michael has no clean shirts. We were hoping to find a Laundromat but our schedule is so full and hectic it is hard to get time to wash clothes let alone dry them.

We had a little competition in the bus to guess how many tunnels we passed through between Pisa and Monte Carlo. The closest guess was 157 but that was short of the actual number of 182.

We stopped at Monte Carlo then walked up to the two casinos. It was still hot although the clouds clung to the mountains behind Monaco. We stood agog outside the casinos where red Ferraris, black Maseratis, white Mercedes and yellow Lamborghinis parked.

One of our tour group took a sudden and unexpected turn collapsing on the footpath causing a commotion. He is Adrian from South Africa and probably about 40 years old. His father said he’d never had a turn like that before. A French speaking doctor was on hand and an ambulance soon arrived. It seemed like an epileptic fit, others said. He is spending the night in hospital.

Michael and I walked into each casino and then straight out again. We walked along through the streets but couldn’t find anything of interest. We walked back to the casinos and bought two beers in a restaurant paying €20. I spoke French to the waiters and understood their responses. A quick look across the marina gave us a good view of the luxury boats moored. Where does all this wealth come from?

Our bus then took us to the next rocky outcrop which is the main town of Monaco. We looked at the palace and walked through the gardens which were beautiful.

We had dinner at a small French restaurant called Freddy’s. The food was fantastic but the service was crazy, loud and rude – Fawlty Towers in French. We began with a plate of tomatoes, lettuces and cheese in oil. Next we had seafood in party with a cheese cream sauce. Next was salmon with green beans and small roasted potatoes. For dessert we had a slice of firm custard with rich chocolate sauce and cream. Michael ordered a large beer and it was the largest glass of beer I’ve ever seen – even bigger that the ones in Germany. The beer cost him €13. We left quickly returning to our bus for the late trip to Nice.