Europe2013: Day 26 Wed 10th July Florence

After breakfast we headed to the bus for our trip to San Gimignano, a beautiful world heritage village in the hills of Tuscany. It was a relief to get out in the country and away from the heat and crowds of Florence. We wound up through the Tuscan Hills passing beautiful vineyards and olive groves. We arrived at San Gimignano set atop a hill and marvelled at the way the village had been built so many hundreds of years ago. We had about 3 hours there and shopped till we dropped in the ceramic and leather shops all handcrafted by the villagers. We had an ice cream from the best ice cream shop in the world. It was so good we had to have another one for lunch.
Back to the heat and crowds of Florence and more shopping. After that we decided not to venture out of our room again until tea time as it was so stifling. For tea we went to the hills again for a home cooked Italian (Tuscan) meal. Gigi said it would take a half an hour to get there normally, but because it was peak hour it would take 40 mins. OMG, after 1 hour we were still in Florence!! We were not moving very far at all in the traffic jams in our big bus. There were only 9 of us plus Gigi and Mario the driver - some chose not to come. We eventually got there after 1 1/2 hrs. It was worth the wait. The chef gave us a cooking class on how to cook perfect risotto and it was the best we've ever tasted. We ignored the massive amount of butter and double massive amount of cheese he put in at the end. Who cared. We were very late home. Some (including Lorraine) walked to the Ponte Vecchio to see it at night but we hadn't even started to pack so chose not to go.