Our journey to Florence was along the main autoroute which meant that we could make good time and arrived at our lodgings by mid afternoon.
Along the route once again we saw amazing hilltop villages, castles, churches and what could have been a monastery, I think Colin got fed up with me 'oohing and aahing' over each new one I spotted! An hour outside of Florence we stopped seeing them as the landscape became flatter.
After 2 hours travelling we pulled into a service station and over saunters a man trying to sell Colin some socks, bear in mind that it was 36 degrees, Colin declined the opportunity!
The Italian service station works quite differently to any other we have come across anywhere on our travels around Europe. On entering the building you have to go and pay for what you want, you are then given a ticket which you take to the relevant food or drink area and exchange your ticket for your food!
I have been disappointed not to be able to photograph a prickly pear for the boys album but have only seen them as we've ridden by.
Many of the areas we've seen since we crossed over into Macedonia have suffered enormously from the intensive heatwave this summer, this can be seen by the aftermath of forest fires we have seen and also the huge number of trees which have already dropped their leaves or are well along the way towards doing so.
The Belgian couple had told us that although there was this tremendous heatwave it is only now that water restrictions are being talked about, we laughed at that and said in the U.K. If we have two weeks of Sun there is always talk about drought and water restrictions!
We have a had lovely evening looking around Florence which is a lovely place, after being slightly disappointed with Prague, Florence has at the moment, lived up to expectations. We were more perturbed than reassured by the presence of armed forces and police on patrol around the town when we first saw them, then at one point, the square around the Domo was cleared as someone had left their rucksack unattended. We came back as four officers were unpacking someone's lunch and camcorder! But we were then reassured to have such a high presence given the attack in Las Ramblas in Barcelona at the weekend and could see that they were both vigilant and pro active.
As we were exploring Benjamin and Freddie FaceTimed us during their bath time! "When are you coming home ?" asked Benjamin and "How many ice creams had Mumps eaten ?" Colin says I've to stop putting photos of him eating cakes as the boys feel they are missing out!