August 28

August 28th (sunny and warm)
After a very nice couple of days in Venezia, we left for the 300k drive to Firenze (Florence) – Georg’s favourite city in 1972. As I have written before, it is amazing how differently we view our surroundings thirty-five years later. Priorities definitely change. You must be certain to look beyond the shops and tourists to see the beauty of a city like Venice. I never miss a `gelato’ shop though – the best ice cream ever. Before we left, I had a talk with the New Zealander who has been on the road for eight years and working this campsite for three months. He told us that the temperature a couple of weeks ago reached mid-40’s with 900 people on the site. That is a strain on their sanitary system.
Most of the drive was rather bland as far as landscape goes until we entered the Tuscany region. The Italian highway system is equal to some of the best in Europe as long as you discount their tolls. This just puts another `bottleneck’ into the system. Just like Austria, we pass through many tunnels. As we are taking it easy on Susi, we have decided to stick to the larger highways which use tunnels to level out the grade instead of the side roads which wind up and down the mountain passes. We will continue to use side roads in areas where the terrain is relatively flat. Susi ran exceptionally well today, with one of the lights flashing at the end of the day.
Hit our campsite around 3 pm up in the hills overlooking Florence. This is the same site we stayed at thirty-five years ago, except the olive trees have become much larger. We enjoyed ‘Happy Hour” with a couple of Scottish lassies, made some calls home to Diane, Bill and Echo and Tony and Carla. In conversation with Carla, she mentioned that she was using a personal trainer for her fitness. This elicited a comment from Georg that we are going to get a personal trainer as well – or a mortician.
Sat around looking at the stars – no bugs, no heat and nice breeze. Had a late dinner and too much red wine.