Italian summer

Last weekend was our girls' trip to Italy. The location was arbitary as the main purpose was to catch up with Julia van Luijk and Jo Drummond (soon to be Jo Nix). We all flew into Pisa, but unfortunately the cheap flights weren't as good to me as they were to the other two so I had an extra day at each end by myself.

I booked myself into a caravan at a campsite with a pool and as it was well over 30 degrees each day passing the time wasn't too miserable...

Julia had booked us into a great hotel in Florence and we had an amazing 4 days, especially since Julia and Jo hasn't seen each other for over a year.


We also attracted the attention of some romantically-minded Italian men (although not the one in the picture above, unfortunately), with whistles etc. Although I'm sure they do it to everyone female and under 40, it was still quite flattering and/or amusing, such as the one who clasped his chest theatrically and pretended to faint while saying oh my heart as we walked past.

One more sustained attempt was a man trying to convince me to go swimming with him. He didn't speak any English and I don't speak Italian so it was all charades and guesswork, although he said mare, mare so much I worked it out and said the sea, you mean the sea! which comically meant he thought I was agreeing (i.e. si si!). Luckily, eventually he gave up.

This is a photo of the Arno River, which runs through the centre of Florence. All the bridges but one were bombed by the Germans during the war.

On our last night we took Jo out to dinner for her birthday at a nicely authentic Italian restaurant and then as we were strolling through the sultry evening air we stumbled across this guy busking. He was doing excellent covers of Simon & Garfunkel. He had a girl singing with him too but they had an argument and she stomped off, much to the amusement of the crowd.

This is some tower I saw in Pisa. The only way to get a photo like this is to be walking to the airport at 7am in the morning before any of the lazy tourists are around. I couldn't believe I had it to myself!