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Hiya,
Part 2 Florence/Pisa/Lucca/Rome
WARNING: This blog is very long and may contain micro sleeps!
After 4 days walking around Paris we set off for Italy and spent the first 4 nights in Florence (Firenze) which was lovely. One the second last day we decided that no trip to Italy would be complete without visiting the leaning tower and managed to get lost as usual. After asking around we were told that you can not drive your car right into Pisa and that we should park the car and catch the bus, this was a great hassle free idea and Pisa was lovely to see until we went to catch the bus back and realised that we had jumped on the bus so quickly that we forgot to get the name of the bus stop! After heatedly discussing it we decided that our only option was jump back on 'a' bus and just go around and around until we saw something familiar. Brian and I thought this was a great idea until we ended up at the bus depot, all the other passengers had gone but there were the 6 of us still perched up on our seats smiling at the driver. Thank goodness that the driver could speak a little broken English, enough for us to explain that we had lost our car. The driver let us stay on the bus and finally after about an hour we found it, I have never felt so relieved to see that little white Mitzy.
After visiting Pisa we drove across to a place called Lucca which is very near the Tuscan coast and absolutely beautiful, by far my favourite place in Italy that we got to see. The whole city is set behind ancient walls and it personified everything I thought Italy would be!
On one of our days in Florence we were walking through the heart of the city when this magical smell wafted our way, we soon stumbled upon a little stall with a lady cooking fresh waffles, yummy, two waffles with your choice of ice cream sandwiched between them, who could say no? We all stood there licking our lips while trying to decide what flavour to have, 6 waffles later and we were in heaven until the lady said 'thank you that will be 47 euros ( $73) Oh my god suddenly that ice cream didn't taste so good, too bad we had already licked them!
TIP: By pass anything that smells delicious in Florence
On day 5 we drove to Roma (Rome) for our last three days in Italy, and visited sights such as the Vatican, the Coliseum, Piazza Del Paulo and many more. The weather in Italy was FANTASTIC and we decided to see the city from the top of a double Decker bus, it was great being able to peel off the winter layers and enjoy weather in the 20's.
Sadly our gorgeous weather came to an abrupt halt when we got to France on our return trip home; we went from sunny days to snow.
The whole trip from England to Italy was long (2 days) and the kids had well and truly had enough of travelling.
On the last night we were driving back through France minding our own business (only because we couldn't understand anyone else's) we had been driving for about 10 hours and only had another hour before we got to our hotel for the night. We got to our last toll and handed the lady our credit card but she kept trying to hand it back saying 'no, no' Of course I couldn't understand a word she was saying to me and kept trying to tell her 'English', so there we sat not being able to understand a word each other was saying, meanwhile the cars behind us were working themselves into a frenzy beeping at us. After 10 minutes of this she had taken our car registration and also Brian's passport and I was really starting to panic (more that she had taken Brian's passport) She kept pointing to her right and we worked out that she wanted us to pull over but I couldn't get her to understand that she needed to lift the toll gate for us to be able to do this, by this point I was starting to get very frustrated and just wanted to get out of the car and slap all the people behind us senseless for beeping.
Finally she understood and opened the toll gate so that we could pull over out of every ones way, peace at last!
We pulled over still wondering what the problem was and within 1 minute a police car with 5 policeman pulled in front of us, my heart was starting to pound and wasn't helped any when a second van full of police also parked across our path. The doors to the police van opened and out jumped all these police carrying machine guns and dogs with big hairy fangs dripping with human blood (ok so I may have embellished a little but those dogs looked mean)
The kids were starting to get worried and I suppose I didn't help matters when I said 'Brian I'm scared, are we going to die'. So maybe I do watch too much TV and maybe my imagination is a tad over active but in that moment I saw my life flash before my eyes and was convinced it was going to come to an end with us all lined up for the firing squad, done for toll evasion!
One of the policeman started to walk towards the car and I gulped as I started to wind down the window, 'this is it' I thought as I put on my bravest smile and said 'Bonjour', 'hello' he said and I was so happy to have someone that spoke a little English that I temporarily forgot about our impending death sentence!
Convinced the toll lady had pushed some sort of security button and we were in major trouble you can imagine my relief when he said to me 'I just wanted to let you know that you can't park here' and proceeded to walk away and set up a RBT unit! Phew now that was a close one…
Brian walked over to the main toll office and paid with the credit card, got his passport back and to this day we still have no idea what the problem was.
After our little toll incident (30-45 minutes later) and we realised that we would be late getting to our hotel so we pulled over at the next services and rang them, surprise surprise nobody spoke English so it really came as no shock when he told us in very clipped English that he had cancelled our room and was about to shut reception.
Great! We were all tired and cramped and cranky and now we had to add homeless to the list…was this day ever going to end.
Apparently not because with no bed to climb into (we did look elsewhere but it was too late) we decided to just keep driving, besides the car was warm and if we stopped so would the heat.Poor Brian he had been driving since 9.00am that morning and was knackered, with no bed and 6 grumpy humans we didn't think things could get much worse but they did when we hit a snow storm in Metz (France) The roads were icy and we could hardly see 2 foot in front of us but we had to keep the motor running so the kids would at least be warm. By 3.30am we could hardly keep our eyes open, we had been cramped in that tiny car for around 17 hours. We found a truck stop, added some extra layers to the kids and all passed out until around 6.00, well actually I woke at 4.30 when Josh starting screaming that he thought he was paralysed because he had no feeling in his legs. I offered him the option of getting out to stretch but he soon decided that having no feeling from the hips down was better than getting cold and wet in the snow.With another drama over I managed to doze off and on until a man walking his dog past the car woke me. Although I wasn't feeling overly jovial I did have to laugh at how we must have looked with our faces pushed up against the windows, bags and limbs everywhere! 2 cups of coffee and a red bull each and we were off with the kids still asleep, the rest of the trip was fairly uneventful and we arrived at Calais (the French ferry terminal) with a few hours to spare so we decided that we would drive into the village and get some breakfast.All having been fed we did start to see the funny side of things ( kind of) until on the way back to the ferry terminal we missed the turn off and got stuck on the motor way causing us to be 25 minutes late for departure. Cheese and whiskers!! How many china men did we kill in our last life!I know you are all thinking that this could only happen to the Griswalts but it appears that god was on our side that day because after going through customs we discovered that the sailing times had been delayed and we were finally on our way back to English soil! Another 4 hours of driving through England and we were finally home. Although beyond tired we had a great time in Europe and found both the French and the Italians to be very friendly. We had some stressful moments where I felt I had well and truly stepped outside my comfort zone ( sanity is such a precious thing) but we also had some very funny times, like Brian being chased down the street by a one legged beggar . Overall everyone seems to like Australians, we are apparently known for being a peaceful country, so obviously they have never been to my house on a school morning! We learnt lots driving through Europe with 4 kids such as don't drive through Europe with 4 kids! Oh and don't buy the waffles…With that said, it can't have been too bad as we are in the process of planning a trip to Spain only this time we will fly and kids club is a mandatory requirement… Cheers from the soggy UK,Dee xx PS Sorry this is so long
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