1.39am (Brisbane – Tuesday, 21 July); 5.39pm (Tuscany)

Saturday and Sunday were rest days. We laid by the pool on Saturday, it was very warm, and covered ourselves in sunscreen. Saturday night, I started Shattered – which isn't exactly for university, but I am so happy that I've been able to write anything at all after Sam's grade.

Sunday on the other hand, it was a little cooler. Cool enough, well breezy enough, that no one really wanted to go outside. Plus James was arriving, so Beth didn't want to do anything but see him. We watched a lot of MTV. I wrote more Shattered.

Today, however, we took the chauffeur, Giovani (I think that's how you spell his name), and he took us around the Tuscan countryside showing us all the walled, medieval towns and castles and dropping us at a few to walk through. It was so nice to be driven around in a car and not getting a bus tour. It felt just like a private tour. I didn't take many pictures – and I missed the sunflower picture moment – because after a while, all the walled cities, all the landscapes look the same on film. Even in person they tend to run together.

Vineyards are one of those things that you need to see in person. Not picture can capture the beauty of a vineyard. In pictures it just looks like a sea of green. In person, you can actually see the lines, see rows and rows of grape vines. Even see the grapes. This was true for both France and Italy.

Italy, I didn't realise, doesn't just have vineyards of wine. There are olive trees and sunflowers (for sunflower oil). The sunflowers are beyond words. Fields and fields of sunflowers following the sun. If I were to come back to Italy, I would try and find accommodation looking over a sunflower field. I would love to wake up to a sea of yellow – not a yellow room, but yellow made by nature. I can only imagine what it looks like from the sky. Also, sunflowers are very defined – you know exactly how they “feel”. If they're happy and 'singing' they're yellow and looking to the sun. If they're sad and, basically, dead, they're faces are fallen, they aren't a bright yellow but a vomit green and they're looking at the ground. Out of everything today, this is probably the best moment I had; seeing the sunflower fields.