When we arrived at breakfast, there was another Contiki group there busy finishing up. Breakfast was the uninspired menu of cornflakes and croissants again. What did impress me, though, was the cherry jam that was served with my croissant. That stuff is yummy. The South African Trio joined us for breakfast, and it seems one of them is getting sick, too. Hopefully the rest of us don't catch anything from them.
Because we'd packed the night before, we got our bags down nice and early. The rest of the group was surprisingly just as efficient, so we managed to leave on time for the first time on tour. As a reward, we were allowed a stop at a viewpoint above a hill to take photos. The drive is incredibly scenic, and there is only a smudge of sunlight on the horizon, while the rest of the skyline looks very gloomy. It's all quite apocalyptic.
Driving through the narrow streets of France in such a big bus is pretty harrowing, since it keeps looking like we are going to bump something. Joey, our driver, is doing a fabulous job, though. He's been navigating the winding roads (which have not been kind to Nicole's stomach) like a pro, which I suppose he is! Someone explained to me that the reason it looks like we are going to keep hitting things is because we are used to driving cars with bonnets, which the coach doesn't have.
On the way out of France, we stopped at a perfumery called Fragonard where I bought my first ever bottle of genuine perfume (and not eaux de toilette). Basically, it has a higher concentration of essential oils and comes in an unbreakable stainless steel bottle that preserves the fragrance for over six years. Not that it will last me that long, since I only bought 15ml of it. It wasn't cheap!
At the perfumery, we saw how they make perfume and got to smell some essential oils of familiar fragrances, such as rose, chocolate, strawberries, and coffee. We also saw how they make soaps (their most famous being a little hand-painted duck). The whole factory smelled amazing, although the smell does make you somewhat giddy after a while.
When we got back to the coach, the whole bus smelled of perfume and my hands still smell pretty. Poor Nicole can't smell a thing with her blocked nose, so I chose some cream perfumes for her. I hope she'll like them when she can smell again! At least, if the world does end, I'll go down smelling amazing!
The bus drive to Piza was uncomfortable to say the least. That awful bed we slept in at our previous destination has left my back and neck in such pain that I actually had a bit of headache because of it. What's more, all that vitamin c I'd consumed in the form of orange juice had made its way to my bladder.
To distract myself, I took the opportunity to catch up my blogging while watching the outdoor temperature change as we drive. Here, there are boards over the highway giving you an estimated time to the next destination as well as the temperature, which is averaging at about 9 or 10 degrees.
We also saw an Italian township, which was something we didn't expect to find in Europe. Seems it's another problem that isn't unique to our country. Our travelling companions were amused that I was trying to take photos of the informal housing so that I could show people back home what Italian shacks look like.
We stopped at a service station for lunch on the way to Piza, where we had an amazing lunch."Gotta love the Italians," as Nicole says. It's a bit weird in Italy, you have to choose your sandwich and coffee first, then pay for it, then take your receipt and go back to collect your order.
They had an amazing display of salads and sandwiches available. Nicole had one with ham, brie,and olive pesto, while mine had parma ham on it. They were so delicious. It's the best food I've ever had at a petrol station. We ended off the meal with a cafe latte each. So great to finally be drinking great coffee again. It's just a pity that no one seems to believe in decaf. So that will be my last coffee for the day.
What's also amusing is that they have gift hampers for sale in the shop section of the service station with toys and pretty gift packages of pastas and spices, so you can actually do your Christmas shopping while you are there. I bought some Haribo licorice allsorts, but they were not great at all, but the Lemon Soda they sell here is YUMMY! Pity I don't have any weight available to take some home with me. It's very lemony. I love it. Yum.
While we were there, Jen bought a singing santa whose hat wiggles as he sings something in Italian that sounds like "Natali" over and over again without stopping. She also bought a witch doll that delivers presents to Italian children after the holiday season. And apparently she sweeps and tidies your home before she leaves. It's quite cute, and comes with a sack full of Kinder chocolates. I'd love to get one for my god children, but I'm not sure if a good witch doll is very appropriate.
On our way through the beautiful Italian countryside, we saw the mountains of marble in the distance and the big slabs stacked along the road. Apparently it is the area where Michelangelo sourced marble for his statues. The mountains actually look snow-capped, but it's just the white marble.
Eventually, we arrived in Piza. The coach has to park quite a distance from the field of miracles, and it was quite nippy. I didn't take my jacket along because I thought we were just going to take a quick photo and then hop back on the bus, but I ended up spending an hour freezing my ass off. We got some cutesy photos of the Leaning Tower of Piza with Nicole pushing it up.
We also got to do a bit of shopping at the market stalls there. I am hoping to get a handbag in Italy, and there were genuine leather ones on sale at the market, but I'm not going to spend several thousands of Rand on a handbag from a market stall. I'll wait until we get to an actual boutique. We did get a chance to buy some pretty pairs of earrings, though, from a guy who spoke a little Afrikaans to us. I also got my ass checked out, according to Nicole, who burst out laughing when she saw, embarrassing the guy in question who nervously laughed back.
Upon arriving in Florence, we all jumped off the bus and hurriedly grabbed anyone's bag to get the suitcases out of the street, and rushed to the hotel only to find out that we'd stopped at the wrong one! So we all piled back into the bus to a hotel of the same name only 300m down the road. Our hotels doors work with a code, which is clever, but the damn thing is so easy to misplace. Like Nice, there were only two elevators available to get us all up to our rooms, so there was a fair bit of queuing in the lobby.
Our rooms were cold! Unlike the other hotels where they felt overheated, these rooms felt like a window had been left open. I got goosebumps just standing there. Luckily, we had free wifi, but I was struggling to connect my iPad to it. When I finally succeeded, I spent all the available time before dinner uploading photos and blogs. I didn't freshen up at all. I literally walked out in the same condition that I walked in.
The Australian girls had put in a lot more effort, however, looking very pretty but not very warm. It was icy in Florence, with every breath visible as a puff of steam before us. At least it wasn't raining for a change, though. The poor underdressed ladies had to walk quite a distance without their coats, since the coach can only navigate so far in the city's narrow streets. Jen actually had slops on her feet because she said her boots were starting to chafe. My bare hands were getting so cold that the joints had actually begun to hurt. I can't exaggerate how cold it was. Due to the fact that, in Nice, I had in fact bought gloves, Nicole's sympathy for my freezing hands was quickly starting to wane!
Needless to say, our walk to the restaurant was a brisk one. We were served dinner in quite a quaint place with wine bottles lining the walls and murals of naked ladies up towards the ceiling. Amusingly, the nipples of the ladies were three dimensional. There is a lot of nudity in Europe, though. We have been seeing pictures of naked ladies everywhere. No shyness here!
We shared a table with a different group of people that night. One of them was a vegan lady with her carnivorous boyfriend who is always teasing her about her diet. They are a super cute couple, actually. He was the only man at our table so we joked that he was King David (since his name is Dave) and we were his harem. There was another vegetarian at our table and someone who didn't eat tomatoes, so it was a collection of special diets. If Dave hadn't been there eating meat, I'd have felt quite bad about tucking into my beefy pasta dish.
The food was served by a doddering old Italian man who much friendlier than the stern French woman that we had serving us the night before. He didn't understand much English, though, so even just trying to get more water from him was like playing 'show and tell.' For dessert, he brought us a big bowl of whole fruit, which we shared among us, that consisted of pears, apples, and oranges. It was simple, but surprisingly refreshing after all the heavy food we have been eating since we got here.
I think that the decided lack of fruit and veg in our diet is also contributing to everyone's weakened immune systems. I've been drinking a lot of orange juice at breakfast to help make up for this. Have I mentioned that we are all gaining weight on this trip? Even if I have, let me bring that up again, since it is an ongoing discussion that all the girls have been having. All these multi-course meals are the culprit because it's not as though we don't get enough exercise with all the walking we have been doing. We're going to get home fit but fat. My first resolution for the new year will definitely be to lose the Contiki weight!
Anyway, after dinner, we headed off to a karaoke bar where we arrived just in time to order one round before the end of happy hour. Nicole and I have decided to stop wasting money on booze that could be better spent on shoes, so we didn't order anything, but the sweet South African trio and an Aussie called Sky shared their pitchers of cocktails with us. The guys, meanwhile, bought huge urns of beer on tap that even came with a sparkler on top!
The toilets at the bar were quite trippy with a window between the men's and women's sinks, so you could actually see the men not washing their hands. The ladies' had a cute sign on the door (also the club's logo) of a pair of heeled lady's legs coming out of beer foam like it was a can can skirt. Another cute sign was at the tip jar on the bar counter with a picture of Mr Bean in his undies and a sign reading: tipping makes you sexy.
It took a while, and probably a lot of those beer and cocktail pitchers for anyone to work up any courage to sing of the karaoke songs. First up was Anthony, another one of the Aussies, who did a brilliant rendition of Frank Sinatra's New York, New York. He did too good a job of it, actually, setting the bar pretty high for everyone else. King David did a great job of bringing the bar right back down, though, with his very enthusiastic performance of Total Eclipse of the Heart, which was kind of shouted in some places and somewhat off-key. His performance was a LOT of fun, anyway.
Nicole and I didn't get a chance behind the microphone, however, since we had elected to leave early with the bus rather than stay late and have to pay for a taxi. Nicole was still feeling unwell and I wanted to get back to the free wifi, so we took the long walk in the freezing cold back to our coach. At the hotel, Nicole was knocked out pretty soon after getting back to the room, while I stayed up past midnight uploading blogs and pictures. It was an uneventful midnight, considering that the apocalypse turned out to much less dramatic than predicted. Not that I'm complaining. Our tour isn't over yet!
I've been getting a lot of great feedback from everyone that's been keeping up to date with our travels, so thanks for that. It is a lot of work for me to keep this journaling and photoblogging thing up (I'm getting teased by my travelling companions about how many photos I take) so it's nice to know that it is being appreciated. You guys are the best! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment