Venice to Florence: Day 12 & 13 Topdeck Mega European Tour

Today we leave the beautiful city of Venice and continue our Topdeck Mega European Tour making our way south towards another beautiful city in the Tuscan region of Italy, Florence. On our way to Florence we make a pit stop at another famous Italian icon, the Leaning Tower of Pisa in the town of Pisa before continuing our journey to Florence and the beginning of the worst two days of the whole tour for me.

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12 MAY, 2012 – Venice to Florence

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Once again this morning it was another bright and early start for our departure to Florence, it’s fair to say that this morning there were a lot of sore heads from the festivities of the previous night, including myself in that category. Today our first stop is Pisa where we get to see the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa, before exploring the town we had an included Topdeck lunch in the coach car park, yep classy.

After lunch (which will come back to haunt me soon) we went and looked around Pisa its tower and the many many tourist trap stalls surrounding the monument. Everywhere you go someone is trying to sell you something from dodgy sunglasses to dodgy anything. What I found amazing was the amount of stalls selling The Simpsons merchandise from characters with the leaning tower to just plain The Simpsons stuff that made no sense being there, even bottles of Duff Beer.

No visit to Pisa would be complete without the obligatory photo trying to straighten the tower, here is my lame attempt, on this day for some reason we were not allowed on the grass.

After Pisa we jumped back on the coach to continue our journey, as we arrived into Florence and our accommodation for the next two nights, just as we were pulling into our accommodation my stomach didn’t agree with our carpark lunch and for the next two days I was out of action and missed out on seeing Florence.

13 MAY, 2012 – Florence (BED)

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Today wasn’t such a great day for me, while everyone went out to explore Florence I stayed back and slept the day away while not feeling the greatest. During the day when I had the energy to go out for a walk I was able to have a quick look around the campsite we were staying in. Usually a 10 minute walk around is all I could bring myself to do before getting exhausted and going back to bed.

Tonight was an optional extra that Topdeck sometimes provides but wasn’t one provided on our trip, our tour leader thought it would be a good experience and offered it to us anyway, dinner at a vineyard with wine tasting. Obviously not feeling the best I wasn’t able to go which was really disappointing as I really wanted to go.

Tomorrow we are off to the Italian capital and once the beating heart of the Roman Empire, Rome. It was fair to say at this point I was worried that I wasn’t going to last on the coach with the way I was feeling, but I guess we will find out.

NEXT: Florence to Rome & Vatican City: Day 14 & 15 Topdeck Mega European Tour

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