Day 10

Buongiorno,

Our last breakfast in Firenze was spent looking up at the Duomo. You can never tire of looking at this masterpiece. We have never seen a photo that does this building justice. Photos just can’t convert the size of the place. Then you stand close to the building and you see the detail in every piece of marble, each a masterpiece unto itself. You have to come and see it for yourselves.

We navigated to our car, then navigated out of the city and off to The Mall. The Mall is the collection of outlet stores for big name brands that we visited last time. Last season’s designer brands at “bargain” prices.

The entry road takes you past the enormous Gucci store, which had a huge queue of people waiting to enter. A queue, waiting to get into a clothing store. The people in the queue were all Asian (no exaggeration), and most of the goods in that store were probably made in their own country.
Grandma is Grandma, and she will never change. Grandma is not a pretentious, “labelly” type person. We come all the way to Italy, the home of couture, the home of Prada and Gucci and Michael Kors, and Grandma wants to go to the Nike outlet store for tee shirts, tights, sports socks and shoes.

We left The Mall and headed towards the coast. We had a rough plan

of going to Pisa, but wanted to stop in at the little town of Vinci, the birthplace of Leonardo di Vinci (Leonardo from Vinci). Vinci is a beautiful little town deep in the heart of Tuscany and is exactly as you would imagine a small Tuscan village to be. Old stone buildings, dry hillsides planted with grapes and olives, blue skies and hot sun. A beautiful picture postcard.

The museum itself was actually pretty boring. If you want to see a Leonardo museum, go to the one in Amboise, in France, where he died and where he is buried. It was nice to see some of his models working, and it was a nice town to visit.

By this time it was 5:00pm, so we headed off to our hotel in Tirrenia on the coast. Speed limit says 90? That means you can do at least 110. And still there will be cars passing you.

It was hotel, check in, dinner and bed. We are looking forward to a relaxing day at the beach tomorrow.

Love to you all from Grandma and Koro and Beach Bum Bee.