Hey Everyone!
I was looking through some old files on my computer, and I found a blog post which I'd written while in Europe, but had never got around to posting because of all the travel =p
I just received an e-mail the other day from one of my old Contiki buddies Katrina, and it bought back all these memories =p So I just had to post it =) I may go back and revisit some of my travelling days and post some pictures so you guys can see what I got up to =)
Maybe instead of doing a day by day break down, I will post by country instead =) Anyway! Enough of me! Here is the post that has been buried in the depths of my laptop for over six months =)
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Hiyeeeee!
So today was a really cool day, because we were going to visit the Leaning Tower of Pisa! The leaning tower has just always been one of these things I've wanted to visit, so as you can imagine I was very excited =p
But we still had the morning in Florence before we left in the afternoon, so a group of us decided to take as much advantage of the time as possible and visit the Ufitzi. It had an amazing array of art available, it was really really cool having the opportunity to see some art done by people like Leonardo Di Vinci.
I have to admit ... I succombed to the gift shop mentality, caved in and bought a book about Leonardo. So sad I know, but I vowed to myself I would read it! ... Yeah, read on a trip in Europe =p
Before we left for the bus, a group of us decided that we had to, and I mean HAD to visit this one Gelati place again. I didn't write about it in yesterday's post because unfortunatly I didn't have pictures.
What? David not having pictures? I hear you ask. Yes, that's right I forgot to take pictures because I was in the middle of experiencing my second Food-gasm of the Europe trip. I was truly distracted.
This Gelati place in Florence was amaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing. Words can't describe how beautiful it was. Everyone else on the tour got these 2 euro tubs, while I had to get the beast 6 Euro tub. Was soooo gooooooood.
While in the process of eating, I would make comments like. "This Gelati has earned the right to be the mother of my firstborn." Which of course led to people commenting on things like "Get a Room!"
J.P was trying to have a conversation with me while I was eating the Gelati, but I constantly zoned out because it was sooo ... damn ... guuuuuuuud!
He also made the comment that he loved how I "Made love to my Gelati". So we decided to recreate the food-gasm, so all of you back home could maybe imagine a portion of what I was feeling.
Mmmmmm ... 5 Paragraphs about Gelati ... You know it must have been good!
Anyway! We ran to the bus (Gelati always seems to make us late when we need to catch a bus) and started the journey towards Pisa.
Fast forward a few hours and voila!
Yay we're in Pisa!!
Our tour manager talks alot on the bus, and today was no exception. While on the bus he spent a good five minutes explaining to us how to take the typical tourist picture of one holding up the leaning tower of Pisa.
"I recommend that one of you stands there, with your hands out, and then the person taking the photo tells you to tip your hand backwards and forwards ... blah blah blah"
I mean seriously =p What else did he think we were going to do!
"Dickson ... yeah stand there ... I'm just going to push the building over a bit more to match your hands!"
I wasn't planning on taking one of these tourist photos, but after such a discussion I had to get a piece of the action!
I know, I know! So impressive! Thankfully I had Gary's advice to guide me!
J.P decided that he'd make a mockery of all the tourists taking these photos (and trust me there were alot of them hehe), so he posed like this!
It was funny at the time ... =p
Then we decided we needed a group shot, so I suggested the following picture. After we started lining up like this, you should have seen the rush of japanese tourists to do the same! I started a group pushing trend! Yay! =p
We then hopped into this cafe to have a hot chocolate. I think it was some branch of the Lindt chocolate, so they had all these exotic flavours and stuff, so I decided to get a Lemon Hot Chocolate ... tasted like dishwashing liquid, so I don't recommend it =p
Even though I had a bad experience, the others had some fantastic hot chocolates, like orange hot choclate, white hot chocolate, etc ... hate them all!
*Drools slightly*
The same shop had some really really really cool tempting displays, which I decided I had to purchase to spice up that night's hotel visit.
The first thing purchased was this giant lindt chocolate!
When I saw the display I had to get it! As I was pulling it off the shelf, this angry Italian woman rushed out from behind the counter, shouted some words at me, and took it down herself. Even as she was putting in a bag for me to take home she was muttering something under he breath, not the nicest shop keeper =p Almost ruined my happy chocolate moment.
Second thing purchased was a leaning tower bottle of Grappe! Apperently the stuff is like 40% alcohol content! So I thought to myself "That's gotta be something like Vodka right!?!"
These pictures were taken later that night at the poker party later that night. But I'll explain a few other things first before I get to that.
So after Pisa we hopped back onto the bus to go to La Spezia. Everyone marvelled at the size of my lindt ball on the bus. Especially Samir one of the South Africans who loveeees Lindt Chocolate. Unfortunately everyone commented that the ball is probabaly hollow since it's so light ... this dashed my dreams of it being full of Nutella, but life goes on =p
We arrived at the hotel in La Spezia, to find it had the smallest and slowest lift in the history of mankind. So we had to carry our bags up 3 flights of stairs to our room.
We then had a nice included dinner which included Spagetti Pomodoro. Mmmmmm.
Over dinner we discussed our plans for the night. We decided we'd meet up after a while and play some poker! Yay! But before that happened some of us wanted to take a walk down to the river. Apperently it was something really beautiful.
So we walked down ... it was night time ... all we saw was alot of darkness unfortunatley =p
On the way back to the hotel, Dickson and I chatted with Shauna, the Canadian female on our tour. I found out that she worked for CTV (Canada TV), and that part of her portfolio was working on Canadian Idol.
Now some of you don't know this. But I'm a really big Idol loser. So much so that I actually downloaded the latest season of Canadian Idol, and watched it week by week, as if I was in Canada ... I know, very sad.
But because of this you can imagine how excited I was to have found Shauna! Finally someone I can talk to about how much I hated that show! It was such a relief you can't imagine. The best thing was that she didn't like it that much either! We had a great time bashing the host of the show who makes Ryan Seacrest look like the least annoying person on planet earth.
During this time I was also running around looking for a certain currency to play poker with. So occasionally, whilst in the middle of a conversation with Shauna and Dickson I'd go "excuse me!" Run off into a shop to look at their merchandise!
In the end I bought a whole bunch of tic tacs to be used as the currency (That's why in some of the shots above you'll see boxes of tic tacs).
We arrived back at the hotel, met up with a whole bunch of people in the lobby and started the game. I bought the Grappe and the Lindt Chocolate down to feast on during the match.
Here's a shot we took just before hand.
The people in the picture are as follows. Guy in the far back left is Phillipe, one of the brazilians. THen moving around the group from left around to right is, Fernaaz (one of the Indian South Africans, who is muslim and shouldn't gamble, so she was "playing!") Ruth and Kristian (Couple from Sydney who were also buddies from the Rome Pub Crawl, Ian (South African living in London, also from pub crawl), me, J.P and Dickson. Then the two girls are Shauna (the one closest to the camera) and Liz (the Australian on the far right). We were all supposed to be doing our best poker faces, that's why I'm looking evil!
I lost all my 5 Euros that night =(
So lets not focus on the game! Let's focus on the happy stuff that didn't involve me loosing all my money!! =p
I bought the Lindt chocolate down in the hopes that it would be the centre piece of the party! (OK, OK, I lie. Mainly I just wanted to eat it).
I was very happy! But in the end Liv and Shauna bought down some chocolate as well, so we just ended up eating that instead =p So I packed my Lindt Chocolate away for another day!
The Grappe was also quite interesting. A few of us decided that we'd give it a go. But it sort of ended up smelling like petrol! The girls said they'd drink it if they had a chaser (a sweet drink to follow it up), so after we had obtained some supplies of Cola, we downed a few shots of the Grappe.
Tasted like Petrol too =p
One by one everyone was eliminated until the final three (Ian, Dickson and Kristian). They were all getting pretty tired and decided to call the game at around Middnight if I remember correctly. I know midnight is that late, but to illustrate just how tired they were after last night's partying this is how Dickson played one of his hands.
Everyone was delt their cards. Dickson picks up his hand and looks at it. Then instead of thinking to himself, "Hmmm should I play these cards." He says out loud "Ohhhh, 10 and King."
Needless to say he folded =p Unfortunatly he would have one the hand with a straight too!
So that was that, one more contiki night down! As always I'll keep ya all updated!!
Byeeeeeeee
BBB
