Today was a fairly long day driving to Lyon. We stopped at Cannes to visit the famous markets but once again they were closed...not having much luck in this regard. We did get to see where the film festival is held and had a snack at Macca's where we were intrigued to find that you needed to purchase something and get a code off the receipt before you could use the toilets! On the way we stopped at Avignon and went for a stroll up the Main Street. It was ...

First we drove up to a lookout overlooking Nice Harbour and exchanged or secret Santa presents across the tour group. Calvin and Francesco both dressed up in Santa outfits. Then we drove to Monaco for Christmas lunch at a nice little cafe. The chicken was ok but still not what we expected for Christmas. Afterwards, we went to the Monte Carlo Casino where we played the pokies. That evening we walked around Nice for a while and ate pizza from a little takeawa...

This morning we visited Pisa to see the leaning tower. It was a bit showery so we were forced to buy umbrellas from the hawkers. Then we spent the rest of the day travelling through some amazing coastal scenery with hundreds of tunnels before arriving in Nice. We had some time to do some shopping and I had some fun practising some of my schoolboy French with the shopkeepers. Then we went to a fairly nice restaurant for Christmas Eve dinner. We had turkey wh...

Our local guide Willy showed us around The ruins of Pompeii where an ancient Roman city has been unearthed from the ashes of a volcanic eruption. For lunch we enjoyed authentic Pizza Napoli.

After Pompeii we were off to Florence. Here we had another local guide who took us on a walking tour around the city including the Statue of David. Then we had an hour and a half to shop for some of the famous Italian leather goods. Stayed at Art Hotel Miro.