Fantastic

After Rome we were in Florence for one brief night which was nice.  The city is very interesting and it was considerably less crowded that Rome.  Considered an open air museum, there were lots of really dreadful Roman statues.  They sure liked naked statues, and they also liked cutting people's heads off and raping them.  In separate scenarios, like.
Then to Nice with a brief stopover in Pisa, which was a lot different than I had anticipated.
For some reason I thought that the leaning tower was in the middle of a big city, and that it didn't have any other historical buildings around it.  I was dead wrong: it's a bit off the beaten path and it's part of a church and baptistery on a very neatly maintained grassy square.  With (oddly) a McDonalds nearby.
Speaking of McDonalds, we had to get off the bus in a lot near Pisa, and then got on this little "train" which is sort of like what the kids like to ride in Stanley Park back home.  This "train" was emblazoned with the McDonalds logo, and it drove us into Pisa proper, but it was just a little strange.  A train covered in McDonalds logos and then an actual McDonalds a stone's throw from the leaning tower itself?
After this we stopped in Monaco where I lost five euros on the slot machines.  Monaco is special the way that Kerrisdale is special.  Very pretty, but really: the wealthy need to give back a little.
We are currently in Nice which is bloody amazing.  We actually looked at real estate prices here: it's beautiful and I love it.  Love, love, love it.  The scenery, the exposure, the weather.
Tres bien!
And the title of this post comes from our tour guide, Vitor, who likes to proclaim everything is either "fantastic" or "cozy".  I guess you kind of have to be here, but it's becoming a bit of a meme.  For the first few days of our tour he kept on referring to our transportation as our "cosy bus" and I thought that "cosy" was the make of our bus, as in "Cosi Bus" or something.
I was wrong.