I am sitting outside with my sparkling water, listening to the 'doof doof' shrieking out of some pretty big speakers up the top of the Piazzale Michaelangelo. There is a rally starting, and obviously it can't start without considerably noise including some pretty crappy, and very loud, music (they just played YMCA, for heavens sake!). But I was a good little vegemite - walked up the steps to the lookout and took a few photos of some cars just to keep my brother happy!

This morning we wandered around some back roads of Florence, past a couple of distinguished looking churches, and past the exclusive shopping area (loads of Prada, Gucci and other expensive shops) until we found a highly recommended leather shop . Garth bought a lightweight leather jacket for the cooler evenings, at a very reasonably price. Not that we have had any cool evenings so far. It's been around 27 degrees here every day, down to only around 17 or so overnight, a tad warmer than in Canberra. Every afternoon the clouds roll in and I get my umbrella and raincoat ready for the deluge that so far has never happened. By morning the clouds all roll back out again, the sun shines beautifully, and out we go in our summer gear!

There are some great areas away from the main tourist areas - fabulous buildings, narrow cobbled streets, churches everywhere (and the bells of two churches close to us are going ballistic as I write this, doing a great job of drowning out YMCA!). The Italian women dress impeccably and many of them ride bicycles in their skirts and high heals (a bit like in Vietnam). Many of the shops out of the tourist areas are tiny, stocking just one line of merchandise, and I am surprised they all survive. There are coffee bars everywhere and if you drink coffee at the bar, it's generally one third of the price of drinking it sitting down. Many of the cafes also sell tiny pastries for next to nothing, and all of the ones we have bought have been scrumptious.

We also went back to the Central Markets to buy more berries - the raspberries and blackberries are fabulous at about $2 a punnet! We also bought two types of pecorino cheese, to go with the most amazing olives, tomatoes..... You can see food has become a theme! Let's hope the exercise outweighs the intake!!!