The city of queues! We queued for museums, restaurants, toilets, supermarkets, train tickets etc. I'm very over waiting in line! We only really spent one day wandering around Florence, in this day we visited the Academia Museum (in other words the museum with Michaelangelo's David) after spending 1.5hrs in the queue we finally got in, but we didn't mind the wait since it was still Cultural Week so it was free! David was quite amazing, I had no idea just how big and detailed the statue was. Went to some famous restaurant (D'Angelos does better!), visited the Duomo and admired the baptistry doors and met up with some guys from our Rome hostel to watch the sunset from Piazza Michaelangelo (with some chianti of course).

We also did quite a few day trips from Florence, we visited Pisa (and did the obligatory photos with the Leaning Tower, you can see those in the photo album). Apart from the tower there really isn't much to see in Pisa, I didn't really rate it much. We also visited Maranello (for all you people like me, this is where the Ferrari Factory and test track are located). So as you can imagine this was quite an interesting day for me! But Paul had a great time, we visited the Ferrari Museum which had various old Formula 1 cars and engines as well as numerous middle-aged americans wearing their Ferrari caps and talking too loud and too much. We also peered through the fence at the test track, unfortunately there was no F1 testing going on, just some guys in their ferrari's fanging around the track. We also visited Siena, a lovely walled city not far from Florence. The day we went just happened to be the Mille Miglia - a car rally for classic cars, mainly from the 50's I'm told (so more cars, Paul now owes me a musical!). So we spent a lot of the day watching the cars go through the streets. We also visited the Duomo (it seems like every city in Italy has one!) and had some more gelato and saw Ewan MacGregor.

TTFN, Zilla

OK, Paul here with just a little more on the cars for those of you who care...

At the Ferrari Gallery, some of the F! Cars on show were; a couple of 1950's gems; two of Giles Villenueve's cars; and two of Niki Lauda's cars; Gerhard Berger's 1987 car (very similar to a model that Dad got me from the 1986 Adelaide GP - oh the memories); Alain Prost's 1990 car; and Michael Schumacher's F2002 and F2004 dominant championship conquering cars. Then there were the road cars; an Enzo, F50, Testerossa were the highlights. There were also some cool prototypes and a heap of engines and other components for me to drool over. Then there was the Black Enzo parked outside the factory...

The lineup at the Mille Miglia started with some 1950's classics like Bugatti's, Alfa Romeo's, Bentleys. The sound of these was just amazing. Then there were some 60's and 70's models from Mercedes, BMW, Alfa, Ferrari, Maserati, Aston Martin, Porche, Jaguar...they just kept coming, and all of them were brilliant. I think Mercedes had brought a fair percentage of their museum over for the event, and being Italy there were stacks of classic Ferrari's too. Check out the photos for a glimpse of the action. To top this all off, when we were trying to find the bus station in Siena, we passed not one, but two, Lamborghini Countach's!! Just parked on the street.