Day 17 - Limoncello electronica
A full day in Florence culminating with limoncello shots at dinner and boogying at Florence's coolest nightime establishment - Space Electronic Discotheque! Yes, it's as cheesey as it sounds. Yes, the neon sign out the front says "discotheque". And yes, there was karaoke.
During the day we hit up one of our tour manager's favourite lunch spots for awesome creamy spaghetti carbonara and THE BEST STEAKS IN THE WORLD! They're called Florentine steaks, are 1kg each (shared between tow) are almost raw in the middle but strangely still delicious and come off a bone that would send Nellie and Noodles into a coma!
Also wanted to visit the David statue but the line was about 2 hours in the stinking sun, so we saw the replica in the town sqaure instead! And took a squiz at the Gallileo Museum (Dad, I think you would have liked this) - highlights included big guns (metal not muscle), "portable chemist boxes" or the olden time pill pouch, a globe of the universe as they saw it in the 15th or something century with the earth in the centre and an orbit "for god" and these crazy wax sculptures of babies hanging out of utereses!! Was genuinely mazed by the amoung of scientific knowledge they had back then though ...
Day 18 - The never ending trek to Rome
After a half day drive we arrived in Rome and were straight off the bus into a tour of the Roman Forum and Colloseum. Weird to walk among the rocks and rubble and think how longs its been there and all the real people who ued it so long ago. Later our tour manager took us on a whirlwind Rome checklist walking tour past the Pantheon, Spanish steps, rich rich shopping strips and the Trevi Fountain. Legend has it ur supposed to throw in a coin each for 1) luck 2) returning to Rome and 3) finding a nice Italian boy. I threw in one coin ...
Day 19 - When in Rome
I thought the lines at Disneyland were bad until I went to the Vatican City. The general line to get in snaked kilometres down the road to the point where you couldn't see that it was actually the Vatican museum they were queueing for! We took the easy option, paid a bit more and scored an hilarious Italian guide in a full white suit who told us how to say "get out of the way" in Italian. I even was able to snap a few sneaky pictures of the Sistene chapel byt showing my camera in my cleavage! Thanks again for the Bloggie Mum :P
Later we visited the cemetery of the Cappucin (i think that's how you spell it) Monks - or "chipmonks" as one well meaning Dutch Girl on our tour tried to pronounce it! Basically its bones of 4000 monks nailed all over the walls in strangely artisitic designs.
Last stop was the "Mouth of Truth" a whole in the wall that looks like a face. You put your hand ing the "mouth" and tell a lie and its supposed to bite your hand. I told it I was a man ... I'm still typing ... hrm
Observations: Green in ancient paintings was the colour of hope. Monkies in such paintings however were bad news. Italian pizza at truck stops is as good as Australian cafes! And (gross-out warning - stop readingfor those who don't know my nose) my cold has been so bad I have callouses on my fingers from tissues! However, Italian drugs seem to work better than Spanish ones...
Mistakes: Messing up languages - the more countries we visit the harder it gets to spit out the right hello :S
