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| Definitely not Oregon |
Let me back up
a bit. Cecile and I have wanted to tour Italy since our honeymoon – days short
of 42 years ago. Time and money got in the way. For out 30th
anniversary, we finally went to Florence.
But it was Florence, Oregon, which was just a few miles from our Eugene
home.
Once I became a
professor, I could afford the time during the summer break. But Cecile could
not take off as much time as we wanted for a trip. This year, however, Alliance
Enterprises gave her a 12-week sabbatical to do what she pleased. And it
pleased both her and me to rent an apartment in Florence – Italy this time –
for the month of June.
The drama began
with a text message from Delta Airlines that the flight comprising the Paris to
Florence leg of our trip was cancelled. Then the St. Louis agent said she could
not rebook us, as Air France owned that flight and Air France doesn’t like to
talk to Delta.
An Air France
ticket agent in New York found an alternative flight for us – but routed through
Amsterdam and adding 11 hours to the trip.
We were bummed, but still enthused. When we arrived in Paris, a more
enterprising agent found a direct flight for us, so long as we would wait around
Charles de Gaulle Airport for eight hours. We tried to take a bus to a nearby
super mall, but apparently the busses had the same schedule as our original
flight.
So wait we did.
We browsed every shop, tried sleeping in awkward seats, and read our books
(Cecile on a Kindle and me on old original iPad.
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| Cecile is our navigator |
Eventually
we made it and were overjoyed to land at the Florence Airport. No ATM, though,
and no place to by SIM cards for our phones. But we found a lonely pay phone to
call our landlady and caught a cab to our temporary home near the Arno River.
The joyous
greeting given us by Dafi Krief made up for all the discomfort the airlines
could throw at us. She and her husband are artists – she a potter and he a
sculptor. The apartment they own is itself a gallery. It is in a 13th
Century building next to the old city walls in Oltarno – just across the river
from the cathedral district. The white walls soar to a ceiling of ancient
beams. Original artwork is placed like only an artist could place it.
It is small,
but incredible.
Then I
discovered that we had left a bag in the taxi. In that bag was my iPad and an
older unlocked phone I planned to use, among other things (like my toiletries).
Dafi called the cab company several times, to no avail. I wrote a plaintive
note to them in English and then in computer-translated Italian. Why worry too much, though? We actually made it to Florence, after all.
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| It's more than a store |
Not surprisingly, we slept in. We made breakfast from the two eggs left by the
previous tenant, then went off in search of a SIM for Cecile’s phone. That took
a few hours of wandering and rewandering only to find the phone store closed
for siesta. But along the way ate our first gelato, got cash and enjoyed the
ambiance. Had a late lunch at our neighborhood restaurant, then back to the
phone store for the SIM.
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| Squash blossoms at Eataly |
We went to a nice but rather routine supermarket for our groceries, but later found what may
be the ultimate grocer. Eataly is both shopper and chef-friendly (Mario Batali owns the New York version). It
combines elegantly displayed foodstuffs with scattered restaurant counters. Where else have you seen squash blossoms in the produce department? I’ll
be back (and write more).
So now we are
back at the apartment, where Cecile cooked a wonderful pasta that we washed
down with a fantastic red wine. It is time now to reflect, recover and ready
for another day in Italy.
