Firenze: August 3rd

So today we spent the whole day at the house of a friend of the family's, they have their own pool so we did not have to go to the beach at all. I thought that the place would be quite small, with a moderate sized pool, but the only thing I guessed right was the moderate sized pool. The house and property is HUGE!!!! they have one of those electronic gates and the really long driveway that looks straight at the house. Turns out that the father of the mother who is friends with the family was some sort of really powerful political guy (I'm guessing) because there are tons of photos of him with people like the Pope, Princess Diana and plenty of military guys. Even the road that the house is on is named after her father. And the mother (I never got her name) knows english so it was nice to have someone to actually talk to and she is a riot. She reminds me of the stereotypical woman from the 20's/60's, 20's because her attitude kinda reminds me of a flapper but 60's cause she is totally a self-made full-time-job kind of woman. So we got to their house at around 10am and stayed till 6, then came back and took showers and went back over to have dinner. The family there has two boys and they are the same ages as Francesca and Beatrice. We had tons of fun in the pool, it was awesome, although I was kinda disappointed that there was no real 'deep' end of the pool, it was about 3 feet till half way where it dropped a foot and then stops. So you couldn't really do and underwater swimming.... but it was still a very nice pool. They also have two dogs, one of which reminded me of Sophie so much because they are both small and have the same type of hair, the same softness and the curls, but Ginger is much smaller than Sophie. They also had a few cats just hanging around, they were not really the family's but they are always there, and they eat the dog food that is outside. I made friends with one and he is so cute!! He (I'm assuming) looks like those black lions (if you dont know what I am talking about look up black lion) except smaller with very bright yellow-ish green eyes. For lunch I tried this new type of food, I don't remember what it is called but it is a speciality dish of Florence for the summer time. It's cucumber, onion, and tomatoes in mashed up bread that looks like stuffing or couscous. It was good, I'm just not a fan of tomatoes so I have to gulp it down with water. The house maid also made home made pizza, even the dough was handmade, it was really good. For dinner we had pasta, some sort of red-meat that was really good, home-made potato strips that were kinda like french fries, gelatto around a circular cookie that had more gelatto inside, and something called tezanno which is a type of tea that you can drink after dinner that is supposed to help you sleep.