(Entry from an email- August 2002)

Hey all my little pets, Okay I know it is a little soon to be sending yet another group email but I couldn’t resist. The emailing place is right in the terminal so it is very hard to pass by without a quick check. Yep, so Magda and I are in Florence right now…very fun! Nothing tall to spit off of like in Paris with the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triumph…..but there is the river timbre which is a bit like the Seine….okay, I am quite sure I have made a variety of spelling mistakes but you will have to forgive me. Actually yesterday Magda and I saw some sort of animal swimming in the river….I think it was a seal, but she was trying to tell me it was a crocodile..and then today she said it was the lockness monster…whatever! I think Magda and I are going crazy because we have been laughing at the dumbest things. Oh an update on our joining the communist party in Italy. The day after our attending the “jazz festival” we were lost and walking down some street (away from where we actually thought we were heading as it turned out) and it is really quiet….like eerie quiet. There was this helicopter above and gradually we notice few people that are on the street are gazing behind us. So we look behind us and there is this mass of people heading straight for us in the street. Who was it? The communist party of course….apparently having a huge parade….so eventually they overtake us…and so we are now in the parade! We followed the parade for a while until we started seeing a ton of cops in all their gear (i have pictures of this)so we excused ourselves and went on our way of trying to figure out where we were. Later that night right outside our hostel there was this guy waiting with a red flag…we figured that he was coming to bid us goodbye but we avoided him and went for Chinese food instead. So ends our communist saga…for now anyways.

Magda and I went to see the Uffizi gallery the other day which was absolutely amazing. We did not go to the gallery where Michael-Angelo’s David is but there are two other fake ones in the city, and they don’t cost 8 euro to go see…(cheapy-pete hath spoken !!!!! ) We went up to this point at night with these three other backpackers from our hostel that you can see all over the main part of Florence. The next day we went to Siena with the three backpackers….Baygo, Memo (both from Hungary) and Mark(from New Zealand). First we stopped outside San Gimignano for some free wine tasting. After all these years of absolutely detesting wine I think I might have developed a small taste for it…but the best part was that the vineyard we ended up at was breath taking.

I will show you all pictures later. So we left there and went into San Gimignano this

cute little medieval city…pretty touristy though. Due to the fact that we were dragging

our feet all day the hostel in Siena was full by the time we got there. Luckily Mark and

Magda managed to find this hotel that would take us for 24 euro’s each…which is a little steep, but we didn’t have much of a choice. So we settled into the hotel, Mark made us this awesome Pasta dinner, and we drank lots of wine (in honour of Beygo’s birthday and for no other reason of course!) . Then we headed into the main square and drank a little more…and then we went for a walk. This is where my up until now fairly boring email gets a little more entertaining. So we are all walking along…when we hear this singing and a drum…and it is getting closing and closer….all of the sudden there is this mass of people in the street. Of course with all our luck lately Magda and I were sure it was those communist…but as it turns out it was just a mass of Italian drag queens having a parade at 12:00 in the evening. There are pictures and I am going to attach them to an email when I get home because there is this particular one of Memo who was taking the picture, has taken a picture of a gentleman with his hand outstretched just before he grabbed Memo’s frontal area….It was pretty funny…although the boys felt a little violated. It was crazy because it happened so fast we were all looking at each other saying " Did that really just happen?". After that we had this great idea to borrow some flags that were within the vicinity as a little memento…of course after some serious labouring when we actually got one down this guy started yelling at us…so we left the flag and took off. Then we ran into the drag-queen parade again, apparently still marching around…and of course that much more drunk. We stayed out a bit later, had a bit more fun and still made it home for our 1:00 curfew. Oh yeah, today when we were leaving Siena we ran into the communist again (no joke)….we are pretty sure it is a good thing that we are leaving for Nice tonight! Well that is about it for now…