Day 5 – Assisi/Pisa/Florence - Tuesday, January 7th 2014: Mr Scritchley

Today was mainly one of Bus travel. We left the hotel and found our bus and the surrounding countryside in a thick fog and the air had that cutting chill of winter. So we left early and spent many hours in that fog as we motored toward Pisa to view its tower with a problem.

A very foggy (and cold) morning

It has always amased me that if there had not been an Architect / Engineer who did not know his job then Pisa would not be at all famous. The tower started to lean as soon as the first level was finished, but rather than stop and dismantle the tower they just pushed on regardless. Fortunately the weather had cleared as the day went on and the leaning tower was seen in all its non-vertical glory.

Brice, Matthew, Sebastian, Emmanuele, Jack, David and Jack in front of the famous landmark

The stop at Pisa was a short one as we were headed to Florence wit shopping on our minds. The group was given 3 hours to “shop till they dropped” and everyone decided that they would give it their best shot. There are a lot of very nice areas to shop in Florence. There are the leather markets as well as many boutique leather shops. There are lots of jewellery stores on the famous bridge (Ponte Vecchio) as well as many clothing and accessory outlets nearby. Want a Rolex? Only 9,000 Euro and its yours!

The famous Ponte Vecchio spanning the river Arno

Down by the leather markets is the famous bronze Boar. If you rub its nose it will bring you good luck. You can see by its very shiny nose that there has been quite a few people giving it a rub.

Julius, Carey and Christian (who kept trying to find chips to eat…not common for Florence, but in the end he settled for Gelato instead)

After a lot of shopping a weary group set out along the Arno to track down our bus. From there it was a short drive to our Hostel.

Here is most of the gang looking for the bus.