Nedster's World now featuring Ellis!

Well we're back!
Indeed we are.
We finished school on Friday for half term and had a sneaky early evening drink up the Bowlers arms with the Halfords.
And I finished nursery for a week too, dragged away from my beloved Eva for a whole week.
I picked all my own clothes to pack for holiday but apart from that we had a lazy day on saturday, acclimatising for our week in the sunshine by lounging about in the garden and having a barbecue for lunch.
Yeah, we laid on our backs looking up at the aeroplanes going over the clear skies above....
Then the next day, we were on one ourselves (after a very early morning start):

We had a slight delay before we took off due to a pukey passenger, she had to be escorted from the plane by a doctor, I hope she's okay now.
Once we were airbourne we adopted our favoured positions, me having a lovely nap spread across mum and dad's legs....
...and me whooping an hollering during take-off, playing DS, looking out of the window (particularly good over the alps) and then pulling the window blind down, much to dad's annoyance.
In what seemed like no time at all we were coming in for landing at Pisa airport.
I announced in my best loud voice that we were coming in for landing, and then we were in Italy at last. I loved spotting our bags coming round the conveyor belt and pretty soon we were on our way to get our hire car.
This took a while if truth be told.....
Yeah but while you lot were queing up, I had a great game of spin the high cafe chair with another little girl, it all went a bit wrong when we span one so hard it toppled over with such force it almost started an earthquake...oops!
We were soon on our way though, driving on the wrong side of the road and everything.
The tunnels we went through on the way were brilliant, loads of them and some of them so long you couldn't even see the end!
When we arrived at the campsite mum and Ned went off to find out where we would be staying and get our keys, dad and I were quite happy in the car with the aircon running full tilt until and old man came over and asked us to kill the engine, I think he was watching Italian Deal or No Deal in his nearby tent and couldn't hear it over the din of the engine. Once we turned it off it soon got so hot we had to get out too, only to find Ned schmoozing Elinor, the lady with the keys for us.
She was of course my new best mate and I latched on to her straight away, paying her plenty of visits during the week to tell her what we'd been up to.
We soon settled in, the sun loungers were to my liking:

The deck outside was met with universal approval, despite the look on mums face here. i think that is a result of the standard of bread on offer. We tried every type of bread from every shop and restaurant we came accross, but it all seemd really quite hard going.

As big brother the top bunk was definatley for Ned, but at least he let me have a little go on it with him, I loved climbing the ladder in there whenever I got the chance unwatched:

I think this baugette was just about passable:

On our first full day we went to the supermarket to stock up, now this was much more exciting than our wednesday trip to Tesco.

Yes, even I was moderatley entertained for a bit, but the pool beckoned in the hot sunshine.

Indeed it did, the top pool was more to our liking than the other one we briefly had a dip in on the first day:

Best of all was the showers, there was a little tap at the bottom for washing your feet, it came out like a raging torrent:

Then it was barbecue time, dad even let me encroach on his territory for a bit of alfresco cooking:

Mum and I had to settle for just looking after the equipment for them:

We made a bit of a mistake with the shopping, what we thought was strawberry milkshake turned out to be cream, called MUKKI of all things!

The site itself was lovely, covered in trees and little pathways for me to explore but best of all were the lizards. Here we are inspecting one of their hidey holes in a wall:

Here's a shot of me posing on some stairs:

And here's a shot of one of the lizards we saw, according to the internet it's an Italian Wall Lizard. I wouldn't argue with that, it was in Italy, on a wall and was most certainly a lizard.

Did we mention how great the pool was?

It was brilliant, all covered in soft grippy rubber stuff, ideal for us little and not so little ones:

It wasn't all grippy though, ha ha!

I took the oppurtunity to try on some alternative footwear:

There was even a little train to shuttle you up and down the hill to the pool:

We had a few quiet moments, I love guess who!

We even had a few trips out and about, here we are in Pisa by the river Arno:

We were of course searching for the leaning tower:

It was brilliant, I loved it, I loved it so much I bought a postcard of it and a small model of it too!

We sat and ate lunch looking at it, contemplating how it doesn't fall over:

I enjoyed my fruit drink:

We wandered around the grounds, it was great for me, lots of steps and ledges to climb:

I amazed mum and dad with my ability to enjoy the architecture, I lapped it all up:

I took a particular fancy to the Santa Maria della Spina for some reason and demanded a number of photo's by it:

Even just boring old flights of stairs were brilliant:

After all that charging about, we decided a relaxing day by the pool was in order. I loved my strawberry towel and cuddling up for a soggy kip:

And I certainly made myself at home, when I could tear myself away from my new found friends:

I always had time and room for Ellis though:

So after were all recharged it was off to Florence. We went on the train this time and if I thought the tunnels on the roads were long the one on the train trip was unbelievable.

So here we are on the Ponte Vecchio a pretty weird bridge with shops on.

Jewellery shops too, I loved them and wanted enough bling to make Mr T struggle to hold himself upright under the weight of it. I promised mum i'd put my own shoes on all the time if I could have some, two American ladies overheard my offer and pledged to match it if she bought them some too. Sadly all three of us were declined.

They seemed to love their rowing in Italy, even in the heat!

I can't believe we've got this far without mentioning the main attraction of this part of the world, the ice cream:

We went to the Giardini di Bobboli for a walk around and some picnic lunch, the entrance was very grand indeed:

Here is the obligatory self timer shot of the week:

And here is a shot I begged dad to take of my butt:

After a long slog up the hill (with Ned in the buggy I might add!) we got some great views over Florence if that sort of thing floats your boat:

Our main reason for coming to the park was to see Bacchus though, we searched for him everywhere:

We couldn't understand any of the maps of the place as they were all in Itailian and we had given up all hope of finding him. We we're heading for the door when we spotted him just by the exit! A naked bloke, riding a giant tortoise. If thats what wine does for you, you can keep it!

We headed on for the Piazza Della Signoria which was full of statues. I was intrigued by them but to be honest some of their facial expressions rather unsettled me:

They didn't bother me, I was fast asleep:

I did a little people watching too:

I slept some more:

We wandered around the Duomo, it was okay I suppose but it was getting pretty hot and we getting al ittle weary:

So we headed back to the railway station to head back to base. Which was a great idea but the information boards were a little lacking and we had no idea what train to get on. Mum went off to find out and came back directing us to platform 16 to board the train that was just leaving.

Dad sat in silence, terrified we were heading off in completely the wrong direction into the Tuscan countryside, never to be re-united with the hire car again.

I don't know why he was so worried, everyone knows mum's a train spotter!
We earned another day by the pool after our cultured jaunt, and seeing as the bread was of such a poor standard we had to ditch the picnics in favour of the poolside catering, result!

Dad was the lucky recipient of my soggy sleepy cuddle up session this time, doesn't he look cool with his sunglasses falling off:

So here we are in our stylish pool attire, a Belgian lady was coveting my sunsuit actually, apparently you can't get them in Belgium:

And I finally relaxed my no photo's rule for this one of me by the best pool ever.

And here it is in all it's glory. I barely saw mum, dad or Ellis on our pool days and made it quite clear that I didn't want to play with them at all as I had my new found band of older friends who were much better fun. Actually, if my mates weren't about I did lower myself to spend a little bit of time with the family.

It was great to have mum and dad all to myself while Ned was far too cool to be with us actually!

All too soon it was time to come home again, rubbish! I really loved every minute of it and made it perfectly clear that we were to come back again as soon as possible.

When we got back to the airport to come home the weather looked none too clever so it was probably a good thing we were leaving:

Once we were inside the terminal building, I found my friend from the cafe chair near disaster the previous week and we wasted no time at all getting into more mischief! We were soon on the plane and heading home, resuming our normal positions of DS and window for me...

...and sleeping across as many laps as I could stretch to for me!
So then it was back to school, nursery and work for everyone...until next time!