The Ballerina

An hour later we were in Pisa. We found that the next train for Florence left in an hour and a half, which gave us just enough time to go and look at the Leaning Tower.

At the best of times my enthusiasm to go and look at things is weak. At four o'clock in the morning after two days of little or no sleep, it is non-existent. But, like in all such situations, the Mob Rule. It wouldn't be all that bad, I decided. After all, Pisa is a small place, and the tower is probably close to the station.

The tower was on the other side of town.

It was at this point that Karim and I started laughing. It had started with something stupid - the Italian train timetable looking a bit like a Chinese Restaurant menu. But once we'd started we couldn't stop. Everything became funny, but funniest of all was the fact that the six of us were traipsing through Pisa at four in the morning with all our bags just to see a bent tower.

After twenty minutes of walking, even the laughter died down. I kept myself entertained by winding up Polly, something that was both cruel and immature. She had been to Pisa before and knew the way (more or less) to the tower. What she probably didn't need was me saying "Miss! Miss! Karim keeps swearing at me when your back's turned!" But she took it with remarkably good grace.

A note on the Polly situation. Polly and I had this unspoken custody battle going on. I was the guy her boyfriend was travelling around the world with, and she was the girl who would prefer him to be at home with her. I had already felt the tension back at the Grandparents, and thought that the few weeks they were together would be decisive as to how we all spent the rest of our lives. That decided, I just thought f*** it - let the chips fall where they may.

Anyway, we found our way to the tower, and all looked at it, and took photos, and made the standard 'monument' small talk.

"It certainly does lean".

"Mmmm"

"It looks like they tried to correct it half way up. It kind of curves away from the lean"

"Almost banana shaped".

"There is something to be said about the fact that nobody else is looking at this thing right now. It's like it's just for us".

"Nobody else is f***ing stupid enough".

"It does lean, doesn't it?"

Polly relieved herself behind a kind of shed thing, and somewhere along the way she managed to piss down the legs of her jeans. The walk across Pisa was suddenly justified. This became the funniest thing in the entire world, and everybody took photos of Polly as she sat in the street having a good think about what she'd done.

After an hour on the train to Florence, we were all half-dead. Karim and Polly left to go and find their camp site. This was the start of the separation - up until now we had always stayed together.

The remaining four of us went to a hostel to ask about a room. They told us to come back in three hours. And even then, we would have to leave during the day so we wouldn't be able to do the only thing we wanted to - sleep. The second place looked great! And it was open all day! But it was full.

The second place had been about twenty minutes from the first. As we got back out into the street, it started to rain.

"Is it just me", I asked, "Or was everyone else expecting that too?"

Katie and Kristen agreed. Andy remained silent. There was a dangerously large vein throbbing on the side of his head.

We went for a drink in a cafe, and discussed our options. The accommodation thing was really getting people down. It was even suggested that we went straight to Rome, just so we'd be guaranteed a sleep on the train. In the end though, we phoned one of the cheap hotels listed in the guidebook and struck gold. For only about an extra two Euros each, we got a four bed hotel room with our own bathroom and everything.

This improved the mood tremendously. Even the half hour walk to the hotel wasn't all that bad - we kept ourselves entertained trying to remember every character that had ever been in Neighbours. Then we spent some quality time discussing the relative merits of He-Man, Transformers, Thundercats and Bravestar. It was my belief that Thundercats heralded the end of proper children's TV, and started a whole new age of over-moralising-read-between-the-lines-and-don't-do-drugs eye candy. It was all very cultured.

The hotel was clean, with comfortable beds and everything in the right place. The others had some kind of bizarre energy spurt at this point, and started talking crazy - they wanted to go out and explore Florence. I thought that was exactly what we'd been doing for the last three hours. I slept. For seven hours.

In the evening we went out for dinner, and then back to bed. For ten hours.

It was great.

Florence is truly a remarkably beautiful city. We walked around all the piazzas, the dome church things and all the lovely streets. Spent some time working out which window in the main square that Piazzi guy got hung from in the film Hannibal. Made mental note to watch the film again when I got back to England.

We met Polly and Karim the next day. They didn't have quite the wonderful experience we had - Polly had her wallet stolen. It was funny because it didn't happen to the rest of us. But, in all fairness, it wasn't very funny. Her cards were gone and she was going to have to wait around in Florence for replacements. We went to the camp site with them and set up the tent. That night, Karim made dinner. We had this kind of arrangement while we were camping. Karim would do all the cooking, and I would do all the cleaning up. This worked great until after dinner, when I would just kind of forget about the pans and the knives and stuff and hope they would go away.

But he did well. A big pan of pasta with all sorts of vegetables chucked in for good measure. I supplied the alcohol - two bottles of Sambuca, and before long, we were embarking on yet more drinking games.

This time Kristen invented one. It was called "I used to be". It may be that Kristen was trying to instil an amount of culture into the group, or maybe she didn't understand the complexities of drinking games. Either way, there was no clear time to drink at any point in her game. Still, she set the ball rolling with "I used to be a ballerina", which was a nice, non-threatening remark.

"I was a lesbian for a day", was Polly's effort. You see what I mean? Doesn't take long. That's why drinking games are so great.

Within five minutes, we were having an in-depth discussion about technique and preferred methods of performing cunnilingus. It was interesting to have a 'lesbian for a day's' perspective.

"I used to be a ballerina!!!!" Kristen was not happy. "I used to be a ballerina!!!!"

The camp site was just outside the city, up a big hill. After sufficient drinking, we all wondered up to the nearby lookout point to admire the view. It truly is something to behold. The way cities should be built.

It made me think of Nottingham, with a kind of embarrassed detachment. Then I got to thinking about England in general. With the exception of London, and arguably York, there's not much to see really. Although I must admit that when I read about Britain in guidebooks (something everyone should do by the way, very funny - did you know that as a nation we're obsessed with hobbies?) I hadn't been to any of the cities in their suggested Itineraries. Perhaps I just don't get England. Or rather, perhaps I wasn't getting any of the places I was visiting in Europe. After all, if you need to go to Bath before you really understand the way the English mind works, then perhaps I should be going to more obscure places in Europe. The thought of the European equivalent of Bath, however, makes me shiver.

Anyway. After two nights in Florence we parted company. Karim and Polly stayed, while the rest of us got a train to the nation's fine capital - just to see what all the fuss was about.