19th February - First day of holiday in PIsa and Florence

It was good that Chris put the light on a timer switch last night as it made it easier to get up at 4.30am this morning! We had breakfast of white chocolate muffins ,yoghurts and strong coffee before getting a taxi to Liverpool airport. The check-in was easy as the queue was small and the plane left on time for a change. When we arrived in Pisa we checked out our cases and decided to leave them at the station left luggage because they only needed one person's details. We then walked over the river Arno towards the tower stopping on the way to photograph a beautiful church which caught my eye.
When we finally reached the tower, we went straight to the ticket office to collect our tickets. I was very surprised that they didn't ask to see our passports, but just accepted the voucher that Mel had sent me. The climb itself was a unique experience. It was weird climbing up on a spiral staircase where the steps were sloping. I could feel my legs getting shaky when I reached the bells so decided not to go right up to the top. When we were finally back on solid flat ground we realised that we only had about two hours to spare. Brian and I decided to look at the Baptistry which was very impressive, whilst Trina and Chris went to the market.
We ended up losing track of time and had to catch a bus back to the station and run to catch the train to make sure we got back to the airport in time.
We were quite relieved to meet up with the others at the airport. Unfortunately our group was not complete. Peter missed the plane ,because he got stuck in a traffic jam on the motorway so he had flown to Rome instead. We decided to catch the bus to Florence. It was quite a pleasant journey, but I was very disappointed that we had to walk to the hotel when we got there as I was very tired.
We finally checked into the hotel at about 7.30pm. My room is fairly small and doesn't have a bath ,but otherwise is adequate considering I won't be spending much time in it! We decided to go to a nearby restaurant for dinner and found an excellent one not far from the hotel. The waiter spoke very good English and was particularly helpful to Lynda who is on a dairy-free diet. I had seafood carbonara and was a little disappointed to see that it was actually prawn carbonara (but it was v. good anyway). When it came to dessert we were spoilt for choice as all three desserts(cheesecake,ice cream and creme caramel) looked good. I had the creme caramel which was lovely.
We returned to the hotel and Keith found a message on his phone from Peter to say that he was travelling to Florence tonight. Chris and Brian decided to go and meet him. The rest of us were very tired after a long day so we went straight to bed.