Cathy here. Sorry respectable readers that we have kept quiet for so long but the shopping in Florence has been quite good. We left Portovenere by taxi to La Spezia. We had this crazy red haired female italian taxi driver who road raged her way to the train station. She kept telling us everyone else was crazy in the head. It was hilarious. The trains were great and it took about 1 hr to get to Pisa. We put the bags in Left Luggage and headed by taxi out to...

Gday again Cathy here. Just finishing up on Portovenere before we leave tomorrow. First day we just wandered around the town and saw a wedding Second day we went out on a great boat trip that took us to the 5 Cinque Terre Towns. We got out and explored at a few. Third day we got the train to the 5 Cinque Terre towns but the rain had begun. Fourth day we awoke to a thunderstorm so decided to do some admin. Our much wanted laundramat didn,t appear as there i...

Gday Cathy here. We realised we had missed a city in our blog and as that was unforgiveable to our brave readers I have decided to take a step back to sunny lake Como. As many of you will know Lake Como is the religious home to all George Clooney admirerers. Krista and I have toyed with this religion so it gave us great joy to be heading to the homeland. We were on our last night of the bus tour with george michael and lake como was the destination. We had g...

Buon giorno tutti! Kristabella here. It's now Wednesday 8 September and Cathy and I are in day three of our five day stay in Porto Venere, a lovely coastal outpost around the corner of the infamous 'Cinque Terre', five sea villages of gelati-coloured buildings with white sheets billowing from tiny balconcies overhead. Cinque Terre is the Noosa for most Italians and the villages are so picturesque it is easy to fall in love with this provincial lifestyle. While Ro...

Gday Cathy here. Our first night in Florence was straight out of a bad italian film. We were taken to a restaurant in an old monastery and the concierge was an italian dean martin. he would grab a microphone and start singing all the great Italian top of the 1950's pops. Tell me Quando Quando Quando! We sang along to 'When a big pizza pie hits you right in teh eye. That's amore'. It was hilarious. There was another old guy that looked like Mel Brooks and ...