Tuscany

On the road again, this time to Tuscany.  We're all excited to get out into the country even though its a pretty long drive.  We were up early so we left Ljubljana just after 7 and decided to get breakfast on the way.  Its never a drama to eat from the service station restaurants as they're so good.  We stopped at a little one early on to get coffee and then about 30 mins later a bigger one for breakfast.

random street art - not sure what it means but it looks good 

breaky restaurant - getting the coffee

all the borders have these signs announcing the new country - finally I got one!

The drive through to Tuscany was lovely and very mountainous as expected.  Was definitely the most amount of tunnels we had been through in one day.  We stopped at another service station for lunch and discovered one of my new favourite sandwiches.  We had a panini with salami and cheese - toasted of course.  It was so yummy, then again everything here is yummy.

signs showing the distance to the next petrol station and the price of their fuel.  Fuel is expensive in Europe - about $2.50 a litre

lots of vines and olive trees out here

toll gates - you pay when you leave the motorway - our bill was 32euro - or about $48

lunch in the tuscan hills

Once we got to Figline Valdarno we stopped at a COOP supermarket to get some supplies.  Its a massive supermarket and it was awesome.  I bought some cannoli so was happy to tick that off the list.  I've decided that I really like visiting supermarkets - it really gives insight into how they live.

We were booked to stay at another Eurocamp campsite and as we were early we sat in the bar and watched the giro on the big screen while having a cappuccino and maybe a sneaky beer.  Once we were able to check into our cabin the mood dropped.  It was the most cramped and crappy cabin we had been in.  The silent thought between us was how are we going to be able to stay here???  No wifi either which makes life very difficult.  I think it took us about 15 minutes to decide we needed to find something else.

I went back to the bar and jumped onto trivago to find something else.  Trouble is this is a smallish town and there aren't many other options here.  The next best bet was to go into Florence proper so that's what we did.  So we packed our things away and we were off again to Firenze.  Tony is an absolute superdriver now and we got to the new hotel within the hour.

driving into Florence - this guy was holding onto the bed frame to make sure it didnt fall out!!

Unfortunately there was a little mess up with the new booking - the suite we had booked wasn't available till tomorrow so instead we got put into a family room in the other half of the hotel which is across the road.  It was old, and smelly and certainly not what we had hoped for.  Also, sooo hot as the aircon didn't work and the tiny window let in the mozzies.  In addition their little carpark was full so they had someone come and take our car and park it elsewhere.  Hopefully it will return in once piece!

We're in a pretty residential area, but there are still a few little places to eat.  We tried the pizza place but that didn't open till 7 and we were starving at 6.  We opted for the kebab place and it was really good.

sicilian cannoli