When we left Pisa, we drove into Florence, knowing each and every mile we were getting towards Rome more and more. (We all quite wanted to go to Rome at this point!) When we left Pisa on the Saturday morning, we drove down to the Florence city centre. We were driving around for ages trying to find a tourist information or a hostel or something, but parked the van instead because it was gridlock in the centre. We walked into a square and finally found a tourist information! They told us where 2 hostels were, but they were both full. We saw some apartments and they were all full too. We sat down at a cafe where they said they had free WIFI, which we wanted. They did have free WIFI, but being Italy, only one person could go on at a time. And this woman was on Facebook for the whole time we were there, when we had no where to sleep that night! After a couple of drinks, me, daddy, Edie and Beth went to 'Florence Dungeons of Torture and Death'. Sounds spooky - don't be caught out. Tim Burton has been there, but even he didn't look very interested when they took a photo of him. In fact, he was looking away from the camera! We decided to go in and see what there was to see, which wasn't a lot! We got a headset with information about what happened in Florence many years ago. It was OK if you wanted to learn about Florence history, but it wasn't like London Dungeons which is awesome. It was just telling us about the Plague in Florence and the food in Florence and various other things. But the guy talking on the headset wasn't English, but he wasn't American either, but he said words really weirdly. For example he pronounced 'saliva' saleeva', he pronounced 'the Plague' as 'the Plarg' and just couldn't speak properly! It really got on my nerves! After looking around the 'Florence 'Dungeons' of 'Torture and Death", we went and met mummy who had found somewhere to sleep. It was a campsite which was on a hillside and sounded all right. We drove over there, and I waited in the car as mummy, daddy, Beth and Edie went to get a pitch. They came back with towels, a remote thing and a big key. I asked what was going on and they told me that we had a bungalow for €80 a night! Bargain. The best thing about it (apart from having a shower and toilet) is that it had a massive air conditioning thing! The weather was really hot, so we used it loads. Actually, the first night we were there, there was a massive thunder storm, so we went out side and watched it. It got quite annoying as it went on all night, but I got to sleep quite quickly which was good.
We filled Sunday with doing lots of school work and chilling out - literally as we used the air con loads. We were going to go down to an Abbey which wasn't far from the campsite, but we didn't as we just wanted a relaxing day with no traveling. The campsite had a pool, and Beth and Edie went in and made up some random dance! It was quite funny, and they had the pool to themselves!
On Monday, we actually went into Florence, but went into the centre. We had a really nice day, but there was a lot of walking involved. We didn't want to take the van into the centre, because it would have cost a fortune to park, so we got the bus in. The bus stop was ages away from the campsite, well, it seemed very long in the heat. There was no shade at all, and I already had a headache - not a great start to a busy day! When we finally got to the bus stop and into the town, we went to the Leonardo de Vinci museum to look at his inventions. On the way to the museum, we saw loads of people selling stuff illegally and going up to people, seeing if they wanted to buy something. Random! The de Vinci museum was really good, and they had loads of his invention plans in. We learnt loads, and we saw lots of his inventions built. We learnt that he invented: the catapult, the tank, the bullet, buoyancy aid, escalator idea, aircraft idea, a way to turn a spit without having to have a man turning it and lots more. After we walked round the museum, we wanted to see a massive cathedral that was in the centre. When we were walking down the street leading up to the cathedral, we could see the tower which was quite big. When we walked around the corner, this was our reaction: "whoa, look at that!", "gosh, that's incredible!" and "yeah, that horse is really pretty!". That last quote may not make any sense, but when we all saw the size of the cathedral (which was massive!), Edie was looking at a horse and carriage! Of all the things to be looking at! But seriously, the size of the cathedral was amazing - it was so big that you couldn't fit it all in the picture when you were trying to take one! We queued up to go inside, and it was actually quite disappointing on the inside. There were nice statues, and there were nice paintings, but it was really plain. The cathedrals in Piacenze that Franco and Francesca took us to were more impressive on the inside. There was a big dome at the end of the church though, and it had a really cool pattern on the ceiling. It was an optical illusion of people climbing out of a balcony! We did look in a brochure and it said that there used to be lots more furniture, but they took it all away for some reason, and put it in a museum that was in the crypt. You had to pay to go down there, so we didn't bother going down.
After looking at the cathedral, we walked to a famous river which had houses built into the side of a bridge! It was so random! People did used to live there, but there are now loads of jewelry shops. The jewelry was really, really beautiful, but so expensive. I better start saving if I want to buy a necklace there. We took the bus home after that, and my feet really ached! I don't know if you ever have this, but if I walk loads in one day and sit down, my feet get a fuzzy feeling! I'm so random! That evening was really random too. We were going to have a mix of things for dinner, including baked beans. Mummy volunteered to go and get them from the van, and a 2 minute job turned into a 25 minute job. We were about to send out a search party, when she finally came back, saying "clear up, a German guy called 'Daniel' is coming round - his dad's Croatian so he can give us tips. Oh, and he talks a bit!" She was right about that - he wouldn't stop!! We got about an hour and a half into the night, when daddy had to start dishing up our paella. Now, paella is one of my favourite foods, and since we arrived back at the bungalow, I was really looking forward to some paella. We had already had paella the day before, but there were 2 portions left over. That was going to be for me and daddy, until daddy said to Daniel, "oh, do you want some paella Daniel?" I looked up from the computer straight away at daddy, and he was already cooking an omelette for mummy, but she decided she wasn't hungry. Now, if you know me, you'll know that I love my food and I really wanted paella! Daddy then said "Ella, you'll be fine with omelette won't you?". Seeing as I was sitting in the same room as a guest, I didn't want to make a fuss, so nodded. I ate my omelette in silence, well, even if I wanted to, I wouldn't have been able to fit a word in to be honest. He did give us some good tips about Croatia, but then randomly started saying how he hated 'Marmite'! Random. He also said that he was a trucker, but he didn't look like one. Any who, he left around 22:00, so we couldn't watch a movie! I was quite tired any way, so was happy to go to bed. It was a random evening!
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