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Bog! (Hello in Croatian)

Today we arrived in Croatia after an overnight ferry from Ancona, Italy. We arrived at 7am in the morning in Split and took at bus to Zadar. We have now been travelling for well over 24 hours without much sleep. I am exhausted as on the ride over as there was a tour group of Italians competing with a tour group of Croatians for the world title of how-to-sing-songs-really-badly-and-really-loudly. They were all pretty fiesty.
So far, Croatia seems beautiful. The sea is crystal clear and bright blue and green water laps up gently upon white stony beaches. Islands of all shapes and sizes dot the coast and we plan to explore some of them...once we get some sleep...

Curry in Toscana

It felt so good to hang up the clippers yesterday after our final day of working in the vineyard. The last week was extremely hot, with temperatures hitting 30 plus, which was getting a bit too uncomfortable to work in. On Thursday me and Damon made a chicken curry and dahl for everyone using Nana's recipe. It went down a hoot particularly with the Italians, who I dont think had eaten curry before. Earlier in the week the Mexicans made us real tortillas and tacos and team Germany made us Speziel and apple cake. Yes, we are quite fat at the moment from all this food, wine and lazying around. We are spending the afternoon in Firenze today, which seems huge and chaotic after two weeks in the peace and quite of Pontassieve.

"Tying the wine and drinking the vine"

The last couple of days we have been working on a small organic vineyard and farm in central tuscany, about 15 kms from Florence, near a small place call Pontassieve.
So far our routine has been getting up at 8:30, eating breakfast then slowly making our way to the vineyard where ten of us travellers spend the morning pruning and the tying the vines up to protect the grapes. this is really boring work, but its not hard. the sun is incredibly hot though.
At lunch we break for a couple of hours and eat, eat, eat amazing food, sleep, then back to the fields for a couple of more hours. after work involves yet more eating and drinking.
We are living in a 1200 year old villa, surrounded by olive trees and vines. the wine, of course, is excellent and we have been drinking lots of it. Organic wine doesnt seem to give me a headache no matter how much i drink!!

ahhh...its been about three days since had access to the internet so it now feels pretty good to be logged on back into society! Spent the last couple of days at the beach in Viareggio, a resorty type town where tuscanites go on holiday. We arrived in Pisa today and have taken the obligatory cheesy photo of the leaning tower.
Lessons learnt on this trip so far: 1.We now know the tent can survive a storm including thunder and lightening.
2. Dont camp next to a railway line if you want to sleep at all.
3. Dont ask for tourist information just before the office closes for lunch. (This is when all hotels are booked out and there is nothing much to see in this town anyway)