Today was literally almost an entire day of travel. We left the campsite in Rome at 9am and drove back up to Florence to pick up Steve, with a lunch stop on the way. Once we got to the Florence campground, Steve jumped in and we were off again. A little way down the road we stopped at Barberino, a designer outlet mall with a heap of shops. However, even though it was an outlet mall, things were still too expensive for our tastes, with everything being designer. So we didn't buy anything.

While we were there, we watched a pizza making demonstration too. They made a pizza from scratch and then we were all allowed a sample. The pizzas here were the biggest ones I've seen so far, and that's including America too. They were probably almost a metre wide. Considering Italy is known for its pizzas, we've all been surprised at how simple they are. I think NZ has taken to the 'more is better' approach, because even our takeaway pizzas have so much more topping on them than these Italian ones, but obviously this is the traditional way.

Stacey and I had a quick look around the mall, but it was an outside mall, so no air con, and nothing particularly interested us, so we just went into a cafe and had another gelato. We've had plenty of gelato since we've been here, but it always melts so fast!

We left the shopping mall at about 4pm, and then took a couple more hours to get to the campsite in Venice. We had an hour or so on wifi and then dinner. After dinner, there was a beach party with different inter-Contiki competitions like sumo wrestling (in suits) and tug of war. The party was over at 11, so most people went to the bar to carry on and me and Stacey came back to our cabins to get ready for bed.

Tomorrow we catch a ferry from the mainland over to Venice for a walking tour and then have a free afternoon in Venice before going on a gondola ride through the canals at 4pm, which I'm really looking forward to.