Before i start this... I NEARLY JUST BURT DOWN THE HOUSE!! :O but, more on that later ;)

So the homeless ferry ride from Croatia to Italy wasnt so bad. Arrived hours early to make sure i could find a bench; ran up with a bunch of other keen homeless italians and found myself a nice space in the bar. Ran into one of the guys from my hostel, so was nice to have some company for the trip. Had to take carefull precautions while i was sleeping, so wore glasses so people didnt know if i was sleeping or not, wore my big headphones to keep out the noise, and a hoodie to scare everyone into thinking i was a hardcore gangsta. Seemed to have worked as nothing was stolen!! Early, and long walk (a few kms, with my luggage) to the train station, and while buying my ticket, lost the guy from the hostel and then bummed into a guy that was on the ferry who was travelling to Florence aswell, so then again it was nice to have the company.

Had a great warm and inviting welcome from Suzie and Brian after arriving to Florence. Its been a great week, been having amazing food for lunch, visiting shopping markets basically every day. I managed to buy quite a lot!! The list so far is: a leather wallet, 9 business shirts, 1 polo, pair of shoes (more to come hopefully!), a leather jacket, a scarf and 3 mirano wool jumpers!! Re-packing my bag into winter-mode now so hopefully i can fit everything in! After i bought my wallet, I managed to get a private tour around the design room which was cool, got to see all the different types of skins, the complicated process of how leather things are made (now i know why most leather things are expensive) and saw all new seasons stuff! Managed to run a couple times while i was here, but as im living up on a hill again the runs are either 90 degrees up or 90 degrees down, not the easiest track. So after 4 great days with suzie and brian, they actually left me at the house haha, so I was lucky enough to stay in their house by myself for an extra 3 days.

I went to a vineyard and picked grapes for one day. A pretty cool experience, however it would have been a lot funner for me if i had somebody to talk to! haha. I was just going up and down the vineyard trying to understand the italian, meh was cool to have actually done it, and they gave me a big lunch for it aswell so scored from that. I think we picked around 5 tonnes from about 6 hours; hope the wine was worth it! lol. Day after was a local market just down the road from where my house was. Went pretty shop crazy that day, cant really help myself in Italy :P And the last day here I went to the meat and wine festival which was just down the road again. Was cool, they had a dressed up cow there, guess they would either cook it later or ride it, never stayed long enough to find out. But was just a small meat stall and wine stalls around, so wasnt 'that' interested in it. Found out from my parents that my family is coming overseas! So that changes my trip quite a lot as i have one less month to visit the places i wanted to go to. So off with the lazy shoes and on with the speedy-travel-shoes to race around all the places i wanted to visit!

Now, we come back to me nearly burning down the house! I was attempting to iron for the first time... thinking that it would be an easy "switch on, iron shirt, switch off" job, it was more of a "switch on, water coming out of iron from all directions, steam coming from everywhere, keeping my cool thinking that this is normal, all electricity turns off, *&%#!!!!!!!!" job...luckily i had my iphone on me, so when the power went out i used that for light. Went to ask for help at the restaurant nearby, but went outside and saw smoke everywhere, so thought there was a fire... ran through the house to check and couldnt see anything. Asked the restaurant for help, one of the waiters came with me to ask the neighbour where the electricity board is in the house, and we managed to find it 'thankgod', and all back to normal!! I was still stressing for a couple hours thinking that there was a fire somewhere in the house, but i chilled out after realizing that if there was a fire, id most probably be looking at it right infront of me right now. :)

Tomorrow im off to stay with an american girl studying in Florence, met her through our mutual friend rossy, and next week should be back in Venice! Untill my next near disaster, ciao ciao!!