We only had one day in Siena, and unfortunately we wasted it on watching the Palio. The Palio is an annual bareback horse race in Siena which they run the outskirts of the town centre. We had heard it was really worth going to see as it was really chaotic and the only rule of the race was you can’t hit the horses in the head, but anything else goes. It sounded like it would be interesting to see, but it was definitely not! We got there at 3pm for the race to ...

Today we went to Pisa and saw the leaning tower, it’s quite a pretty building, just slants a bit! We then headed to La Spezia and caught a train to Levanto (just outside Cinque Terre) along the Italian coastline, it was nice to see the ocean again, but it’s got nothing on Aussie shores! The campsite we’re staying in used to be an olive grove, and there’s still heaps of olive trees around, great for harvesting mosquitoes (lucky me). I have bites everywhe...

We went to the Uffizi gallery (where the birth of Venus hangs), there wasn’t really anything else here that interested us. We then went to the Leonardo D’vinci museum and looked at some of his inventions and artwork and also watched a DVD on his life and different theories he had come up with, it was very interesting to see how advanced his theories were for his time. We also went into the Cathedral of St Maria, the building was from the time of the renaiss...

We went on a boat cruise in the afternoon, it took us to 3 different islands close by Venice, we went to Murano where the Murano glass factory is and got to watch them make a vase and a statue of a rearing stallion. It’s amazing how much detail they are able to put into the work when working on it, the glass looks like liquid, it gets (and stays) so hot, that 5 minutes after they’ve molded it, they can light a cigarette off the actual glass itself (which the ...

Today we went walking through Venice, it’s so peaceful, and there are no roads in the main city and no car and no bikes, just full of cute little alleyways and a whole lot of bridges! We wondered through the streets and tried several flavors of gelato, pizza and nocci (almost every Italian stereotype). We also done some shopping and bought a cute little Italian charm bracelet each and a pretty glass heart necklace for me. We then headed back to the campsite...