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Hello there pets, how are we all? I'm well thank you for asking. Now that the formalities are out of the way let's get down to brass tacks. Today we travelled about a trillion hours on a coach to a town I thought was in coastal Victoria, but it turns out they have one in Italy also, Sorrento (I wonder if they have a Blairgowrie too). On our way to Sorrento we stopped in the much nicer (and hotter!) Florence. We arrived at about 9am after leaving our hotel at 7:30am and it was already about 30 degrees, but like the troopers we are we pressed on. Our first stop was the square of the Santa Crux (holy cross) were the church of said crux is. We wandered down a side alley to go on our mandatory leather shop excursion (Florence is Europe's leather capital) while we waited for our guide to take us on out tour. Surprisingly enough Sally bought a handbag and I wanted something that was way to expensive so I didn't get anything. We then met up with out guide who was phenomenal, I could have followed him around all day as he explained. But that's beside the point because the facts were very interesting. Florence was the capital of Italy before Rome (Italy itself is only 150 years old) and was a thriving society back in the day. In the church of Santa Crux many famous Italians are buried (or entombed) including Michaelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo Da Vinci etc. The church was built in the 1200's but due to a lack if money the front facade wasn't finished the 1800's. We then moved on to the Duomo. This place is absolutely massive and the dome was one of the first ever built. It is made almost entirely out of local marble (white, green and pink) and the dome took 16 years to build (this was incredibly quick for the times). There is only one man buried in this place and that is the man who figured out how to build the dome, his name escapes me though, I think Philippe something. Also the dome is 105m high. This is unfortunately the time when my earpiece on the radio we are provided with cut out and I now could no longer hear our guide as he is what Jerry Seinfeld would call a low-talker. So what we saw next was some impressive doors (there were gold in the day but have now been replaced with bronze and been guilded) which depicted 10 stories from the bible. We saw Michaelangelo's "David" (it was a replica, penis and all) and some other very cool statues like "the rape of something or other" which was the first time ever three figures had been cut out of one piece of marble anywhere in the entirety of the universe yet I still can't remember it's name and many others. David's hands and head are to big for his body as the statue was meant to be about 30m in the air on a church and think was the way to make it look normal from the angle. We also saw the ponte verde (I think) and the town hall which has a 105m tower on it. We then had a rather uneventful drive to our hotel in Sorrento except for the roads are very thin on the way and it was a bit of fun trying to get through at peak hour. We are off to the Isle of Capri tomorrow (23rd of august) to get some sun and wander around. Sorry about the lack of accurate facts as I couldn't hear the guide and we can't get the Internet here which is why this might have the wrong date on it and is a bit late. Anyway see you soon, I've gotta be up at 6am and I hope to hear from you soon
Alex
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