Our departure from Venice involved our first and only highspeed train. Very luxurious - especially after the jam packed vaporetti (water ferries) of Venice. We had the whole carriage to ourselves when we left. There were electric blinds on the train windows and Wifi - though the connectivity wasn't great.
According to the monitors in the carriage we reached 246 km/h.

We arrived in Firenze (Florence) for a quick stop. Time to see a museum (one of the few open on a monday), and hopefully enough time to get April's cellphone checked out which apparantly didn't like its brief swim yesterday. We found a mobile repair shop, left it with them and headed to the Museum of precious stones. It was incredible - not jewels or jewellery but pictures made from pieces of geological stones and crystals cut and polished. Hard to describe but incredible workmanship, accuracy and detail. Well worth visiting - even interesting for the kids with slices of lots of different stones and the tools used to cut them all on display.

We headed back to pick up the phone via a few leather shops - as Darryl was on the hunt for something specific. The shopping was successful - the phone not so much. It now powers up but the touch screen no longer works. They offered to replace the screen but we had a train to catch in 20min so it will have to wait. Off to Lucca by train, a 2 hr trip, followed by a long walk to our accomodation (must have stuffed that estimate up somehow as 47 minutes was a lot longer than the 20min we were expecting). Our accomodation was on the outskirts of town and our attempts to find a bus route online had been unsuccessful hence the initial decision to walk.

The owner recommended a local eatery (the only one nearby) attached to the tennis club, so we headed down for a late dinner at 8pm (the earliest they offer). It was the perfect place to experience a non touristy local Italian eatery. The chef came over to take our order himself and we had a brief discussion with him about the menu. We decided he would cook us 3 pasta dishes (his recommendations) and we chose two pizzas - a thin crust ham and cheese with a light tomato base, and a folded pizza filled with ham, artichokes, mushrooms and capers. Not previously a thin base fan, I have to say I'm now a convert. So light it almost melted in your mouth, what a shame we can't get pizza like this back home. We were feeling full, and about to leave when they unexpectedly brought us out some deserts - followed by a liquor. It was an effort to try it, but it was very nice and the liquor was lovely - that's one Italian tradition that we could get used to.

Scott: I got a free toy out of the vending machine at the restaurant. Dinner was yum, the dessert was best.

April: The pasta was really good and I was really full....and then they brought us deserts which would have been rude not to try. So I did, but then decided if I ate any more I would explode.

Darryl:
Dinner was molto bene. The train was nice. Shopping in Italy is an experience. You never know whether or not you're getting a good deal, or being conned. Hopefully it's the prior one. Either way it's all part of the experience.

Sarah: There was a green stone fireplace in the precious stone museum that I liked. The pizza was delicious and I like some of the pasta too. Dessert was nice.