Hotel Ac Pisa

On our way north, from Rome, towards the Italian Riviera we made just a slight detour to Pisa to see the famous Torre Pendente (leaning tower). We're here to tell you, it is in fact leaning and we weren't interested in climbing to the top to see if we could get it to lean any more (and trust us, with the amount of pasta, vino, formaggio, etc. combined with the large amounts of tourists at the top of this structure... you never know). But ...

Pisa

woke up to pouring rain again so lucky we had a good look at the views the afternoon before… but made a tricky drive down in rain then onto Autostade.. Very fast but pouring rain to start with… finned up as we neared the coast… made it to Pisa… drove in traffic and down one way streets.. Mainly the right way we ...

... validate the tickets on the way there and use them on the way back no one checks and I know its terrible but we need to save money and paying 16 quid on a bus is a meal out lol.

I have finally given in with my shoes I have tried to fix them so many times that now I just had to bite the bullet and throw them away managed to get some off a market for 10 euro and they are ok so wearing them. Danielle has been buying everything in sight ...

Tuscan Hills

The drive from Venice to Tuscany was eventful (as always). First we wanted to see the Adriatic Sea.. We knew we were near the coast but finding a road which led to the sea was not so easy… even our sat nav lady Shirley couldn’t seem to find the sea… all we wanted was enough sea to put the feet in and say we had been to the Adriatic Sea… please note wet feet in venice the day before could not be counted as Adriatic Sea ...

... to me was pretty cool. My dorm was just a two room apartment, with 11 beds. My bed was basically in the kitchen. It was cozy and I liked it, impossible not to make friends in a place like that. And the Australians were back in full force.

My first night I went out for dinner with a few people from the hostel and had what I think is the first full fish dinner of my life. Full fish meaning head included, looking ...

After travelling for the last 6 or more months without a real break we thought we might just settle down for the winter, instead of heading back to London and back to work. We are plonking ourselves with some of Dino's relatives in Tuscany.
Shona can't speak a word of Italian, but is planning to learn and not one of Dino's relatives speaks English. It should be an interesting few months.
We ...

... some good pictures on the grass in front before the police with their whistles tried to scare everyone away. The excitment didn't last long before we were off on the train again. It was here that we also had the most expensive coffee ever!! 6 dollars for maybe 2 oz!

... town with a good market, better coffee and great wine tasting. We got a bottle of special reserve rosso (red) and will send it home only to be opened on a special occasion; a birth/death/marriage or when I finally get fired (predicting late jan 2010... I'll be back just starting back at work and they will realise they were better off without me...I've had a good run) The next day was our Tuscan cooking lesson day - at the farm house. It was a full days work for us; we needed to ...

... on television. It definitely leans, thus the name. We walked around and took a bunch of pictures. We also climbed to the top of the tower. It was kind of crazy as the stairs circled on the inside of tower, they aslo leaned making it kind of an adventure climbing up. On the top, the surface was not level, which added to my discomfort, seeing as I am not a huge fan of heights. The view was okay from the top, but we did it more just to say that we climbed ...

... the evening, not to mention world famous! Finally we rounded a corner and there it was - leaning crazily. You can't help but smile. As ...