Bogulicious

Buongiorno again, I am still in Italy, woo!

At the moment I am languishing in luxury sat in the camper as we now have internet in our van! This is such an incredible luxury, I really really appreciate having it. We had to pay for it of course, and we only have it for one month so I am making the most it.

So, to carry on with the travels… we left Deiva Marina on the north coast of Italy and drove east to another coastal town called Viareggio. At this stage the coast had just started turning south into the boot part of Italy, so you can imagine where we were. We chose Viareggio because it is close to both Pisa and Lucca; both cities are only a short bus ride away, so we stayed there for about a week. As well as being by the seaside our campsite was on the doorstep of a beautiful cycle path through nature woods, which apparentely contained such exotic delights as wild boars, snakes and tortoises. I was very disappointed not to see any.

Pisa's grand Piazza is indeed worth visiting. The tower is darn expensive for what it is but you have to go up it, it's the law. You also have to take goofy photos of yourself 'propping up' the tower or you are seized by the local authorities and thrown off the top.

Lucca is a very beautiful, small Mediaeval city with many stunning old Churches. As a city it is more impressive than Pisa. You see so many Churches though, you get a bit numb by the end of it. It also is surrounded by an impressive set of walls that you really wouldn't want to fall off of.

After that week we drove inland, into central Tuscany and Florence. We found a camperstop right in the centre of the city which was cheap, fairly quiet and ideal for visiting the sights. And visit the sights we certainly did. We walked and walked around the endless beautiful streets and payed a visit to the Uffizi Gallery which was wonderful. They have works of art there like Botticelli's Venus rising out of the sea on her floating shell, as well as Michaelangelo, Leonardo Da Vince and Giotto. They also have lots of old Roman sculptures which are awesome.

We walked up hundreds of steps to the top of the Duomo to take in the panoramic view of the city with the Tuscan hills all around in the distance. We also visited the Santa Croce Church, the Ponte Vecchio bridge and many street markets. While we were there I bought a funky red leather jacket that is the only item of clothing I’ve bought since travelling! How unlike me is that. The last thing I bought was in Southampton before I left. That’s the start of August folks, I really am a changed woman.

We had one disaster in Florence though, well two infact now I think. The first was that my bankcard had to be stopped because some utter idiot in an internet shop discovered my pin number by his complete ineptitude as operating a chip and pin machine. When asking me to put in my pin number he hadn’t put the price in first so my pin number appeared as the price and he got to see it. I didn’t trust him at all and phoned my bank who told me to cancel it immediately. Yah boo sucks to him and now I have no card.

The second thing was that our fridge well and truly broke. It is a small fridge, but apparentely camper fridges are very special and therefore expensive because they run off gas, 12v and 240v electricity. So we managed to find an Electrolux repair man just outside of the city and thank God he had the part and managed to fix it within a few hours while we sat around chatting, smoking fags and sipping espresso, but the circuit board bit that broke was €330, RRRaaahhhhhhhhh! The pain was immense but we literally had no choice but to grin and bear it. We do need a fridge. Brand new the thing costs well over a grand which is just staggering.

Currently we are one stop on from Florence (with, touch wood, a working fridge). We are about 80km south of the city, still in Tuscany and just outside of a town called Arezzo. We are 7km away from the town in a very rural village called Ruscello which has many olive groves, vinyards and old, dusty looking Italian men sitting around smoking outside bars. It is so pretty I feel as if I am in the film ‘Stealing Beauty’. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if Jeremy Irons suddenly popped up and started spouting poetry at me. I feel so relaxed here I could melt into the sofa.

We cycled into Arezzo yesterday and discovered, to my delight, that it is where they filmed a large portion of the film ‘Life is Beautiful’ which is officially one of my favourite films of all time. The first half, if you have seen it, before it is set in a concentration camp! Arezzo has an old centre with a Cathedral and big open squares and Churches. We went in on a Friday and there was also a large market selling food from all over the place. We bought some Dutch cheese that is like a really strong mature cheddar, mmmm. They had stalls from all over Europe but the British one only sold pottery, for some bizarre and upsetting reason. If they had sold marmite I think I would have ransacked the joint and bought the lot. Marmite, and nice sliced bread, are two things European in general really don’t do. I love their bread, but it is so fresh if you don’t buy it everyday it goes off, and if you buy it daily you have to wolf it all in one day and you end up bloated on bread which really won’t do… Bring on the English bread that’s stuffed full of preservatives, that’s what I say!

Well we are leaving this lovely campsite tomorrow and heading south to Lake Trasimeno for a few days before carrying on towards Rome. A lot of campsites are closed now for the winter so we have to rifle through our guide to find open ones. There are loads around Rome though so that shouldn’t be a problem.

We are having a lazy day today, and are about to go another round of scrabble. Oooh you can’t beat it! Seriously, it is highly enjoyable, and I know we are a couple of old farts but it’s the little things we enjoy these days! I bought a pack of cards yesterday as well and can’t wait for a good old round of rummie. You may laugh, and probably will, but I will grin and bear it.