Dubai is unbelievably hot. The air is so thick and moist it is like breathing soup.
We are waiting at the airport for the long flight home. Yesterday we went to see the biggest hotel and then went to the biggest shopping mall – it was huge.
Burano is famous for Lace. It is also a colourful fishing village. We loved this island and we only had 30 minutes here. We went back to the boat to tell the tour guide that we weren’t going on with the tour and that we wanted to stay there. She said that was fine she was bring another tour through there at 4:00pm so we could catch the boat again then. Great.
We had a lovely last Italian dinner and are now waiting to go to the airport and on to Dubai.
Today we went to the Cathedral in St Marco square. It is awesome with lots of gold mosaics and the mosaic floor is really interesting.
Trevor went to the top of the bell tower and had amazing views of Venice from there.
Venice is extremely busy with people – it has been the busiest place we have been to by far. Tomorrow we are going for a tour to three Islands Murano (where they make the beautiful glass), Burano (where they make lace) and Torcello.
It is quite humid here but it cools a bit at night. We are ready to get away from all the people.
to mix with the commoners! 
We went more into the centre of Florence tonight for dinner and came across some students doing street art and musicians playing – lovely atmosphere.
We were a packed up now and heading to Venice.
Then we went to find the markets – lots of leather – bagsw, handbags, belts etc very exciting – made a couple of purchases!!
Then it was time for more mundane stuff – laundry – it is way too expensive to have it done at the Hotel.
Today it was 36 degrees – very hot – thank god for our air conditioned hotel.
Here is a shopping basket to carry home all the purchases! It is about the size of those “Little Tykes” cars for toddlers.
Tomorrow we are off to Siena for a day trip.
Or Florence as we call it. Today (Sunday) we went for a walk near our hotel and came across a local Flea Market. Here is Trevor in front of one of the antique iron stands.
We found lots of treasures we would have loved to have brought home but the airline probably wouldn’t like it
We walked to the Duomo (Large Cathedral) in the middle of Florence – the queue was so huge we didn’t go in, might try again another day. We had lunch in a little Café (they call them Bars here) where you buy slabs of pizza, panini, fruit salad etc.
This afternoon we took an open bus tour up to one of the exclusive hill suburbs Fiesole. Very nice – all the paintings you see of Tuscany (or Toscana as they call it here) are so true they paint it as you see it.
Tonight was another special night – The Feast of St John. Outside our Hotel the street was blocked off. We are on the edge of the Arno River. Directly opposite us there are some gardens and there was an amazing fireworks display there tonight that went for 40 minutes – it just kept going the streets were packed with people out to watch it. The loud bangs echoed off all the buildings and the fireworks were reflected in the river – it was fantastic.
Sorry guys blogger has published these out of order and I dont know how to change it.
This is Vernazza – a beautiful village built into the cliffs. We then set off for Corneglia which didn’t have a port and is set high in the cliff. This took one and a half hours also – more sweat and puffing. We had a lovely lunch here. After that were the villages of Manorola and Riomaggiore which were only about half an hour apart and a little more easier to walk.
On arrival at Riomaggiore we went straight to the office to book the boat trip back because by this time we were buggered and didn’t want to miss the boat. The boat wasn’t operating because of “rough seas” – well the sea was as calm as a good day in NZ!!!! So we thought we had to muck around in this tiny village until 9pm tonight. We thought about hitch hiking but decided not to. There were no taxis or buses. We went back to the train station after lots of mooching around and they said that there might be a train at about 6:00. We went to a bar and had a couple of beers with a nice Australian couple to fill in the time. We were so pleased to get back to Monterosso and have a shower – very hot, tired and sweaty – not a relaxing day at all but glad we did it.
Monterosso is the largest village in the Cinque Terre (pronounced chenkway tear) group of five villages. Our hotel room is considerably bigger than our last one and is back from the beach but very nice. The temperature is cooler here than Rome – feels like about 28.
Beside the Pantheon there was a lovely café where Trevor decided to taste the Italian cappuccino and I had a gelato ice cream – sorry girls too hot to drink coffees
Then we set off to find the Piazza Navona – one of the largest Piazzas in Italy. This was beautiful and is known for its delicious eateries in the evening (more about this later).
A short walk (everything thing here is not far from each other – even though on the map it looks like miles its really a short distance) across the Tiber River and we were at the Castel Saint Angelo. This is near the Vatican and is a huge fortress type castle in very original condition. The statue on the top is the Archangel Michael sheathing his sword after the end of a plague (without looking up my guidebook I can’t remember when this was). There is a secrete tunnel from the Castel to the Vatican. The age of things and the beauty of them doesn’t stop amazing us at every turn.
Just down the street from our hotel is this fantastic store, a cross between diary, liquor store and deli – it is fantastic – we could learn so much from the Italians. They don’t seem to have as much bureauocracy here and the place is better for it – OSH would have a field day here and maybe it should be compulsory for them to visit Rome to see how anal they are at home.
We booked a Tour “Rome Illuminated” which was to be a tour of Rome at night. The only problem was that for the first hour and twenty minutes it was still daylight! As part of the tour we went back to the Piazza Navona – it was packed with people and buskers – really crowded – such a contrast to when we were there earlier in the day. Trevor had a look at the prices at the Restaurants – they averaged between 30-40 euros for a main ($60-$80nz approx).
We are off to Cinque Terre today not sure if there will be internet access there so may be a few days before I can do any posts.
