What a day! After a blissful eight hours of sleep, AND the early delivery of my suitcase to the hotel (thank you, KLM, Air France, and a totally unexpectedly efficient group of folks at the Florence airport), we had a beautiful breakfast courtesy of Carla and her son Paolo, our innkeepers here at the Hotel Casci. I must heap praises on this wonderful small hotel. The rooms are great, the water is hot, the floors are marble, there is a frescoed ceiling in the narrow dining room where we eat our breakfast and have our classes. The food! Wonderful Italian frutta, eggs supplied just for American and northern European tastes, and delicious coffee. Even the water tastes good.
After breakfast, we shower and dress and come to class at 10:30. Our instructor, Bill Walter, is an absolute fount of knowledge, with years of humanities teaching to his credit. He immerses us in the history of art and architecture for this beautiful city, and we are sorry to end at noon. In fact, we keep him talking for an extra 10 or 15 minutes, just with questions. (This is par for the course for OLLI folks. We have boundless curiosity and absolutely no shame.)
It's 12:15. Mike and I venture outdoors. It is 97 degrees already, but low humidity. Never mind - it's just plain hot. We stroll down the street, headed for a small grocery store. There we buy salami, some wonderful sliced cheese, two croissants (we can't help it, we love them), some mustard, a six-pack of acqua naturale, and (also can't help it) a bag of chips. These are special chips - nothing but potatoes, olive oil and a little salt. Back in our room, we make sandwiches and the chips are great. So are the sandwiches.
Then out the door again with the group, down the street a mere two blocks, and we are in the piazza of the Duomo. Bill accompanies us and continues the lecture from the morning, giving us all the wonderful details the guidebooks don't mention. There are literally throngs of people; it's high tourist season in Florence. That's okay with us - we're here for two weeks, and we'll come back in the evening and wander the piazza as much as we wish.
Such a great day - so far!
As we wander towards the hop-on/hop-off bus tour, which we've planned for today and which tickets will be good for 48 hours, it begins to rain. No worries; we simply duck into a gelato shop and buy a couple of cones. Mike has lemon; I have chocolate (duh). It's delicious. We sit at a table with a group of girls from Minnesota, who are visiting Italy for the first time. They are beautiful, athletic, probably a team of some sort. They're a little google-eyed - Minnesota girls probably have never experienced heat like this. We are fine. We are from Florida, after all, the humidity is low.
As the rain lets up, we all comment (as we always do back home), "Looks like it's about over." And we head for the bus, which boards near the train station, only a few blocks away.
The bus won't hold all of us in the interior, so half the group climbs to the open seating on top. The seats are wet, and there's much joking about getting them dry. One husband invites his wife to slide across both seats to dry them off; she gives him a look. We are optimistic; the brief shower has produced a cool breeze.
As the bus pulls away from the curb, the rain returns. This, my friends, is not just a gentle shower. This is an old-fashioned, gully-washing, frog-strangling, soak-you-to-the-skin-in-30-seconds, just-like-north-Florida thunderstorm, complete with lightning, thunder - and hail.
No one is prepared. This storm wasn't predicted by the Weather Channel. No one has an umbrella or a rain slicker. Some have hats; I do not. First I open a map and hold it in front of my face, as my glasses are like little windshields with no wipers. The map melts and falls apart in about five minutes. Then I use a partially unfolded brochure, just to shield my eyes. The earbuds so thoughtfully supplied by the bus company continue to pipe Verdi into my ears, and the recorded voice of the English-speaking guide cheerfully directs me to see this beautiful piazza on the right and that amazing bridge on the left. I can see nothing. It's raining cats and dogs.
Mike is as miserable as a human being possibly can be. He is angry, cold, wet, worried about his camera, which is out of its case and in his pocket. My bag has all of our money - I'm wondering if we can dry it out when we get back to our hotel. IF we get back to our hotel. The round trip lasts more than an hour, and it pours the entire time. If Dante were still around, he would create another level of hell with exactly these conditions.
However, most of our group is laughing and joking. We all look like drowned rats. Someone even jokes about a lightning strike being just about all we haven't experienced so far on this trip. Those of us raised in the deep South don't think this is one bit funny.
As we ride through the streets of Florence, cheers go up from the throngs on the sidewalks who are sensibly sheltering from the storm under awnings and umbrellas. We love the Italian shopkeepers who wave and smile and shout, "Buongiorno!" We try not to sulk. We are cold. We are shivering. We think we'll be on this bus for all eternity.
But of course we survive. After all, it's just a little rain. We get back to our hotel, strip off our wet clothes and I head for the shower. I wash and dry my hair, put on dry clothes, grab a bottle of water out of the in-room fridge, and head for the lounge. "I'm going to post on my blog," I tell Mike. He's lying on the bed, reading. "I'm going to finish this chapter, then take a shower,," he says. "In fact, it's nice to just lie here and read for a minute."
"We're on vacation," I tell him. "Enjoy!" He gives me a little wave, then goes back to his book.
A little later, we'll go out, maybe have a glass of wine, find some pasta and insalata mista somewhere, and take that evening stroll back to the Duomo. Paradise, indeed.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment