Travelling to Firenze (Florence)

The alarm went at 2:30am, I turned it off and went back to sleep. I woke up at 3am and thought bugger! So it was a little bit of a mad rush to get up and showered before heading to Luton Airport (about 1.5hrs drive from Oxford). With a little bit of Peter's speedy driving (if we drove that fast in NZ he would have lost his licence!) we made it to the airport in time for our flight to Rome.

Rome I hear you say, I thought this was about getting to Florence, well it is!

Once we arrived in Rome we caught a bus to the Rome train station and a train to Florence. Yes, yes, I know we would have just flown to Florence and out of Rome, but I think these things were a little bit of a sign of things to come.

So back to the story, on the train we sat opposite an Italian couple, young and oh so glam! I was sitting opposite the girl, who was beautiful (maybe it was all the make up) but she was wearing a very eye catching top that seemed to draw one's attention to her chest, in some way I wish I could have taken a photo so you could understand. The top was a singlet with a straight band across the bust which seemed to hold itself up then there were two semi circular bits where her boobs were they were screaming look at me!

It was lovely being on the train, nice and air conditioned. When we arrived in Florence it was time to hunt for a bus to our campsite. However in Italy you have to get your ticket before you get on the bus and then validate your ticket on the bus (same goes for the metro in Rome but more on that later). Eventually, after buying our ticket and standing in the shade of a lamppost for 10-15mins our bus came and off we went. My first impression of Florence was what a beautiful city it was, on the way to the campsite we drove through a lovely leafy suburb which I thought was very Italian.

Finally we made it to the campsite, checked in and found our tent. The campsite had fixed tents that you could hire, ours, probably very much like the others, was pretty decent inside. But it was also BLOODY HOT!!!! it was about 30 degrees + outside and about 5-10 degrees warmer in the tent. My first stop once we arrived was to the loo. I was a little dismayed that I could find no loo paper anywhere, for us girls this is a little important. So I came out and told Peter about my dilemma and so we went to have a look in the shop to see if they sold any, it was shut for afternoon siesta! Dismayed, Peter suggested he get some from the gents, so he went in and I thought I'd double check the ladies. What do you think the first thing I saw when I walked in? You guessed it a large roll of loo paper outside the toilets that you had to get before you locked yourself in! How very logical and I wonder how many people have been caught out with that one!

After we had recovered from our trip we walked up to the look out and looked out. We have lots of photos but they will be out later. We had a lovely dinner at the look out where Peter taught me how to eat pizza the Italian way (folded in half, many thanks to the guys at Ferrari who taught Peter) and then headed back to the tent for a well deserved sleep. And sleep we did until about 3am when we awoke freezing. After we had found our polar fleeces and any extra blankets we slept some more... Ready for day one of our sightseeing...