Florence, Italy

Florence, Italy, Saturday (14/05/05)

Another fun packed day,we are now sitting in a bar overlooking Florence, supping beer of course :) We have paid 30 euro for a tent. Considering the campsite has fantastic views of Florence and 70 euro is a low end hotel, we have done well. Here is what has happened over the last few days and I will finish off with what happened today...

Manarola (12/05/05)

We head off from Santa Margherita Ligure down more winding roads, the short distance of ~40Km and even that takes us over 2 hours. Laura parks her scooter on slope outside the tourist hut and it falls over... There goes the resell value... Nothing too major though, just a few scratches.

We head down the road to Monterosso and park our scooters in the paid car park, hopefully they will be there the next day when we finish our walk!

Side Note: We are in Cinque Terra, 5 villages that are perched on cliff faces and you can walk between them via traditional farming tracks which have been built into the hills using stone.

After being ignored in a café, we buy some cheese and bagets for lunch and head off on the trek. Laura counted 20,000 steps on her step counter thingo and most of those would have been stairs going up or down, it was very hard going but worth the effort. We could see our scooters in the distance and impressed ourselves with how far we walked.

We gave up at the 4th village though and stayed the night (only to find out that the last bit was dead easy). However we had a great meal in a restaurant watching the sun set over the mediterainian and a great room for the night. A will let the pictures say the rest...


Where we parked the scooters taken from one point where we walked.


View from the track


Uno of the 5 villages


Pisa (13/05/05)

The next day we took the boat back to Monterosso, where our scooters were safe and well. We then headed for La Spezeia(?) but decided when we got there to go further to Pisa.

We checked into a hotel room at 105 euro! Not only was it expensive it was half the size of the room the night before (which was 50 euro).

We had a wander around Pisa though and that was pretty cool. We also had a meal in a great little place in a side street.


Pisa on a lean

Florence (Today).

We had planned a short day (because of our extra journey the day before) but it is to be an exciting day because we visit Pontedera, the home of Vespa. We travel the 40 Km from Pisa to Pontedera and then when we get there wonder where to go. Once we find the tourist office, we find the friendliest person behind the counter. We not only find out where to go but leave with posters, maps and a whole bag of things to do in Pontedera (if you go to Pontedera go to the tourist office!)

Side note: Pontedera is not a bad little town. In hindsight I would have based ourselves there and travelled to Pisa.

The Vespa muesum was great!!! It was free and the only downer was that they did not stock their shop well. I was really looking forward to getting a Vespa t-shirt but they had none in my size (I also found out that Piaggio frown on anyone else using their logo, which explains the lack of scooter t-shirts on Italy). Again I will let the pictures tell the rest...


The big scooter


We hope to buy this model to get back to Australia in


Scooter bookshelf

Florence was another big city nightmare. It took us less than a hour to get there but about 2 hours to find a place to stay. It is great having a tent and that plan "b" has helped us again!