Sunday, May 4. Today was flying to Florence, Italy. We knew the RER train to CDG was scheduled for repair starting Monday, so all good, right? So it seemed repairs started a day early. Another travelling person (local) became our leader, guiding us to where to exit the train and where to find the bus that would take us to CDG. This is why we always leave early for the airport!
At the airport, we realized we had Sky Priority on our boarding passes. That got us 1st class preferred luggage check-in and preferred TSA entry. No lines! And an uneventful flight.
Thanks to YouTube, we had researched how to take the train from Florence airport to Santa Maria Novella Station. So easy and cheap. From SM Novella, it was a 7-minute walk to my apartment at Via Benedetta, 7. The apartment was nice. It was on the 3rd floor (no elevator) with a fold-out couch in the living room, a large dining area, and full kitchen, 1 bedroom, and a common bathroom. Oh, and a laundry room with a clothes washer and drying rack.
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| The obligatory welcome bottle of wine. |
Monday, May 5. I had my first The Good Life Abroad meeting with everyone and the 2 coordinators. Bill took off to explore Florence. Google Maps was constantly used due to: streets are not in a grid pattern, the only open areas were plazas (about every 5 blocks), so you are always without a line of sight, and there aren’t any parks or greens. Cobblestone streets, Vespas, bicyclists, and inattentive walkers everywhere.
Tuesday, May 6. We decided to cancel our Cinque Terre 2-day trip due to the expected all-day rain. I cancelled the Vernazza hotel. Both Bill and I were struggling with head colds. We did a morning walk to Il Mercato Centrale Firenze, a permanent farmers market for supplies: groceries, wine, Sambuca, limoncello, and cheese. In the afternoon, we walked the long uphill trek to Boboli Gardens only to discover it was a paid entrance and would be closing in 40 minutes. Then we walked to the next ridge viewpoint, to the Piazzale Michelangelo.
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| View from Piazzale Michelangelo |
It was a high viewpoint overlooking most of Florence. We did not stay for sunset, as the previous ridge would hide the sunset. So, we walked back to the apartment and then had dinner at Signorvino, an outdoor eatery in the SM Novella Piazza.
Wednesday, May 7. The all-day rain never materialized, so we wandered about. We learned about the train station, the Duomo piazza, and had lunch outside at Moving On with a view of the Duomo. The Moving On restaurant was also a vinyl record store with interesting band/concert photos.
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| The Duomo is massive. |
Near the apartment was a restaurant, Osteria Pastella, which always had an entrance line. So we made reservations for dinner and got seated at a 6-seat table. A few minutes later, a Mom and her daughter from Chicago were seated on the opposite end of our table. I remarked Thank God that the couple with the screaming/crying baby did not get seated with us. The mom, Robin, was visiting her daughter, Bryce, who was studying abroad in Rome.
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| Great dinner and conversation. |
The restaurant’s signature dish was a flambé, partially made at your table. While pasta is cooked in the kitchen, a cart with a large cheese wheel is brought next to your table. The server then scrapes some cheese loose, which creates a well in the cheese wheel. Then an alcohol is poured into the well (also containing the scraped cheese). The cooked pasta arrives, then the server torches the alcohol and stirs the now-melting cheese and adds in the pasta. Two more moments of stirring, then the pasta/cheese is plated and served. Then my Wild Boar pasta arrived. So indulgent. The four of us had a great conversation and shared wine and desserts.
Thursday, May 8. We leisurely walked around Florence, then went to the Museo Galileo. This was somewhat misnamed – there were only 2 artifacts attributed to Galileo in the museum. I did get an appreciation for the Medici family that funded and protected scientists, including Galileo, from the Roman Catholic Church. Adding to our frustration was the museum app. This app could have used a UI expert in the design phase. Bill and I both gave up on the app, and after a while, the museum.
We alleviated our museum frustration with gelato.
Friday, May 9. We took a Viatour tour of the Galleria D'Accademie di Firenze of Michelangelo. It would have been impossible to get in without the skip-the-line pass. Our tour guide added so much by explaining not just the historical significance, but also how the statues were created. She referred to David as “my boyfriend”.
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| Our tour guide's "boyfriend". |
After the museum, we stopped at another outdoor cafe for lunch. Then we had to go by the Duomo and Palazzo Vecchio one more time as it was Bill’s last day in Florence. I prepared dinner in the apartment, and we enjoyed wine and Sambuca.
Saturday, May 10. I joined Bill for the walk to the SM Novella train station. Italy transit is so good; a train arrives every 7 minutes. And like that, Bill was off to home via Chicago. I had scheduled cleaners for the apartment on this day, so I walked to a university library near Duomo as recommended by Rich Steve. I arrived just after 10 AM and followed the signs up to the 2nd floor. It was an open-air covered patio with a coffee kiosk, so I got a cappuccino and a brioche for the princely sum of €3.5. So delicious.
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| Duomo view from the library. |
And then sat down at a table with a full view of the Duomo with college students preparing for their day of studying and writing notes. So peaceful, with students using their library voice and being situated 2 levels above street noise.
After the refreshments were completed, I walked off to peruse through town. Eventually, I got to the central market and did some provisioning for home. At the apartment, the cleaners have been through and replaced linens and towels.
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| Taken when walking after a group dinner. |
Friday, May 16. I joined a Viator tour of two wineries and a bus ride through Tuscany. The Good Life Abroad also had a winery tour in Tuscany, but I opted for a different tour due to the price. The Good Life Abroad tour costs 330 euros, and the Viator tour costs 110 euros. I met an Australian group touring Europe and had great conversations.
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| View from one of the winery tours. |
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| Dirty Martini by Flavio, at The Arts Inn. |
Monday, May 26. This was to be the Italy trip highlight. I planned to pick up a rented Ducati Multistrada V2, drive it to Como, circle Lake Como with a tour guide, and then return to Florence. The motorcycle was reserved. A Geneva hotel and two nights in a Como hotel were reserved. Back in the US, I had taken a motorcycle training course (needed for licensing), gotten the motorcycle license, and also purchased an international license. All the planning work was done.
I arrived at Tuscany Motorcycle Rentals and got all the paperwork signed off. Then I got a walk-around of the Ducati. Beautiful, with only 3,600 miles on it. Wow, have motorcycles changed since my 1973 Honda 350F (still miss it). I put on the rented jacket and helmet, started Google Maps on the phone, and took off.
It felt v-e-r-y wonky. I decided to drive around surface streets, then progressed to some highway stretches. The wonky feeling just did not go away, but rather increased. So I stopped just to reset. I parked and unzipped the jacket, and I was soaked in sweat. I wasn’t prepared for what I got into.
So I drove back to Tuscany Motorcycle Rentals and explained that I am cancelling my trip. I could sense they were expecting me to want the rental $$$ refunded, but I assured them this was on me, not them.
I am OK with my decision. The spent $$$$ is attributed to the Sunk Cost Fallacy (it’s already gone), but I was not OK with 4 days of anxiety and stress.
Tuesday, June 3. Fly day. My first flight was at 9:45, but Bill’s info on 1+ hour lines for luggage drop-off scared me. So I left my La Dolce Vita apartment at 5:35am and caught the next T1 train from SM Novella to the airport. I was in the system. Plenty of killing time in airports. Notable was the second of two flights, the leg from Munich to San Diego. Lufthansa had been making a push for flights to/from San Diego (in place of my usual LAX, then shuttle home). I had wisely looked over seating when in the 24-hour departure window. Score! I moved to a seat in an unoccupied middle section for an 11.75-hour flight in economy.
Someone once told me the two best days of a vacation are (1) taking off and arriving at your vacation spot, and (2) flying home to sleep in your own bed.
She was right.
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| Until next time... |
Italy Notes
- Everybody dresses well, not necessarily for fashion, but it seems everybody runs very cold here. Even when the days got into the high 70s, I would see people wearing puffy jackets on top of everything. Few locals wear shorts.
- I discovered that taking the city bus from my apartment up to Plaza Michelangelo was a very scenic drive, as compared to the direct-but-steep walk done earlier in the trip. Enough that I walked back down following the bus route, which gave me a view of huge mansions and great Firenze views.
- A lot of smoking in this town, as is typical of European cities. Some people were rolling their own cigs and stepping outside to enjoy them.
- The Firenze steak everybody raves about it’s really just an overabundance of meat; even with groups of three or four, it’s still too much.
- One of the common themes told by the tour guides is that public bathrooms are a rarity. Sienna had one with an entry price of one euro. I wouldn’t mind paying one euro at times for bathrooms, but it really came to a point of just not even having that as a choice. Our tour guide said your best choice is to stop in a place and buy a drink, just so you have a bathroom available. There were only a few people walking around with a water bottle for that reason.
- I was disappointed in the cafeteria-style dining experience. I guess I was spoiled with the Polish milk bars.
- Big thumbs up for the library coffee kiosk. And prices were the most reasonable in town.
- The apartment was great. We did have to learn that the floor was uneven where the living room was sunken down about 6 inches. Obviously was done so kitchen/bathroom piping could be installed. I could not figure out why they did not have window screens. Without screens, you end up having bugs in the home. I forgot how much of a nuisance it is to have bugs flying around your head at night.
- All of Italy seems to take pride in huge doors; most street entries are always double doors, and certainly with the older buildings, as well as anything downtown or at least 12 feet plus in height.
- I did notice on the Siena bus ride that the countryside really is beautiful. Not many industrial crops such as wheat, etc., but it does seem to be certainly in Tuscany, it’s all wine and olive trees. When doing the tour to taste wine and olive oil, the market difference between the olive oil that I get in the US versus what I got here was huge. I could definitely taste the difference.
- I was wearing shorts every day above 68°F. Also wearing the long-sleeved white Columbia nylon shirt and straw hat for sun protection.
