Monday, April 12, 2010

Day 8 Drive to Florence

Sarah and I got up early, to watch Amelia and Emma do their morning chores with the horses, and because Amelia said we could watch Suzie schooling her Grand Prix dressage horse – “Dodo”. She was saddled up – a beautiful (but small) black mare, who Suzie had bought already at that level. It was a privilege to be able to watch them work together. Dodo moved amazingly and could perform all the advanced movements well, the passage and one time canter changes particularly impressive. It will be interesting to see how they do at the world equestrian games in October.


Sadly we had to leave then, as we had another fairly big driving day to Florence. On the way, we visited the leaning tower of Pisa – very leaning indeed! It was a beautiful late sunny afternoon, and lots of people were sitting round on the grass enjoying the sunshine. Its interesting that Pisa was completely different to how I remembered it last time we visited 20 years ago. I am sure nothing had actually changed, just my memory of it.

A while later we reached Florence, and found our camp ground for the night, on the hill overlooking the older part of the city. We didn’t like this camp ground so much – a big trek up the hill for the toilets (and not toilet paper supplied at this camp – lucky we had some with us). The advantage of this particular camp was that it was walking distance into the city, just down the hill and across the river.