Day 31 – May 16 Monday

A late start, 6am wakeup, bags by 7am, depart by 7.40am from the hotel.  Beautiful & sunny, a stark contrast to yesterday.   By the time we walked across 3 bridges & about 1km of canal sidewalks we are at the bus by 8am, waiting a short while for our luggage to arrive by water porter.  This is a bit scary as the bags are piled high in a boat, you’d think any lurch of the boat & the bags would be over the side & at the bottom of the canal.  We left Venice with a drive through some of the outlying suburbs, with some nice country villas owned by wealthy people.  We could see lots of snow on the high Dolomite Mountains, no wonder it was cold yesterday.  Our bus trip was uneventful, travelling through fertile floodplains with lots of wheat growing.  Travelling through the Apennines we could see a new freeway under construction, the existing one was built by Mussolini before the 2^nd world war.  There are so many long tunnels through mountains, we have never been through so many before, not even Austria had this many – the Italian’s must be very good at tunnel engineering.

After a brief rest stop we continued passing through nice farmlands & drove into the outskirts of Pisa.  Buses are not allowed in the centre of Pisa so we had to stop at a bus park about 2km out of town & caught a “train” bus in.  We didn’t expect to see so many beautiful buildings.  The leaning tower is actually the belltower for a beautiful church in front plus another beautiful building in front of that again, all surrounded by a fortification wall.  We wandered around, taking the obligatory photos, then had lunch in a cafe looking straight at the leaning tower.  There are so many black Africans trying to sell everything from hats to sunglasses to umbrellas to fake watches – they are annoying & sad that this is how they have to earn their money.  Off to the bus by 2.30pm & on to Florence.

A couple of more hours & we were in Florence, after gathering the required bus permit to drop off luggage we drove down the extremely narrow streets to reach our hotel, the Cavour Grand Hotel, built in the 14^th century & right in the middle of old Firenze (Florence). It was the very first hotel in Florence, a converted palace.  Our bus driver did extremely well navigating such narrow streets, it’s amazing he didn’t hit anything (such as walls, scooters, cars, people – all so very close).  The Cavour hotel room is amazing, huge bedroom, 2^nd bedroom & a massive bathroom, so different to our Venice accommodation.  The building is about 500 years old & underwent a refurbishment to make it a very comfortable modern hotel.  A short time to settle in & then it was off to our night destination, a tour of the Chartreuse Monastery just out of Florence, built in the 14^th century.  The monks here never spoke or saw anyone, they maintained isolation in their cells doing whatever monks do.  The tour was very sobering, such an austere life, no wonder there are only four monks still alive & living there.  Dinner was at a restaurant run by a different order of monks (these monks actually care for those other crazies) just a short distance from the monastery.  Dinner was magnificent – aperitif of orange spirits made by the monks, a fantastically fresh salad, fettuccine, steak, washed down by Chianti, then an ice-cream desert with a liquor on it, followed by a digestive liquor.  All the while we were entertained by a monk playing the piano accordion plus an operatic tenor singer – they were an extraordinarily good combination.  Now & then the senior monk serving got involved, he had a great sense of humour & an excellent singing voice & mannerisms totally uncharacteristic of what I thought a monk was like – we laughed & sang until it was time to go back to the hotel.  We had a fantastic night & it was with joyous hearts we rejoined the bus for the trip back into Florence singing along with Dean Martin some old Italian favourites.  A nice hot shower & bed for a well needed rest even though we slept on the bus a bit (it’s exhausting doing nothing).