Today we left the
French Riviera and were heading for the next stage in our tour…… ITALY! I could not wait to get back to
Italia. It stole my heart in 1993
and I was really looking forward to seeing Firenze again.
Before we left France
we stopped into the Fragonard perfume factory near Grasse. Not a good place to go when you have a
bit of a sensitive nose!
Fortunately I didn’t have a sneezing fit but my nose was glad to get out
of there. In the factory we were
shown how they made perfumes and soaps before being let loose in the shop where
we were seduced by everything being sold at “factory prices”. I didn’t expect to purchase any
fragrances as I’m not really a floral perfume person. I’m more into the woody perfumes. But they had one that had musk in it. So I ended up buying the smallest bottle
of it and some Argan oil.
Time to leave France
and into Italy. We drove through
Carrara where we could see Marble quarries high up on some mountains. It actually looked like there was snow
on the mountain tops! We had a
brief stop in Genoa because we had to drop off a suitcase (can’t remember where
we picked it up?) for someone on another tour. Apparently it belonged to someone who was on their honeymoon
and the husband ended up in hospital.
We never got told the full story, so not sure what happened there.
After being taunted
by Leo that we were passing the turn off to go to the Cinque Terre we arrived
in Pisa. From the bus we caught a
shuttle bus up to where the Leaning Tour was. Leo said we would be given free time to look around before
meeting back at the shuttle bus.
As we were walking to the Tower Jax was taking note of the surroundings
so she wouldn’t get lost. This was
a fatal error of judgement on her part.
One minute Jax was walking along, the next minute Jax was flat on the ground. Jax rolled her ankle on a dodgy part of
footpath and down she went.
According to people behind me I came down pretty hard. Leo wanted me to go to the doctor but I
said I was fine. I knew I hadn’t
broken anything but I sure as hell re-aggravated my osteoarthitic knees. But I managed to hobble around the
Leaning Tower and back to the shuttle bus / bus.
We eventually all
make it back on the bus and head to Florence. This is where it became evident that this part of the tour
was poorly planned. We made it to
our hotel in Florence at 5:30pm to be told we were leaving at 6:00pm for a tour
of a leather factory and walking tour.
It was too much for a lot of the older people on the tour. For myself I felt up for it, I wasn’t
tired. It was just my knees that
were protesting after the “Pisa Incident”. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me. The visit to the leather factory was
ok. I had been there before and I
refrained from buying a new handbag.
That was helped by the fact no bags were really grabbing me. It was then time for the walking
tour. We met our guide outside the
Santa Croce proclaiming how beautiful it was inside and all of the people
buried inside and then said “next time you are in Florence you must go
inside”. What? We’re not going IN? I was disappointed. Yes, I had been in there before, but
that was 19 years ago. I wanted to
go in again! Epic fail
Cosmos! We then headed up to my
favourite square, Signoria Square.
Each time I’ve been there I remember the fight scene from A Room With a
View. Plus second time in Rome and
still I have not seen the real Michelangelo’s “David”, only the replica in the
Square. We then proceeded up to
The Lucky Pig (yes, I rubbed its snout for a second chance for good luck) and
also walked past the golden doors to Paradise, The Duomo before meeting Leo
back at our meeting spot for our walk back along dodgy footpaths back to our
bus.
I think a lot of
people were glad to be back at the hotel that night. There were many complaints that night/next morning that the
day had been too rushed.
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