October 15 Florence

Last night I started rereading Robert Hellenga’s the Sixteen Pleasures, a novel I read years ago. All I could remember is that it’s about rescuing books from the 1966 flood in Florence, and that I loved it.

We left the Umbrian olive farm this morning, traveling down the mountain by taxi to the train station in hazy sunshine. Even the quiet art nouveau station seemed hectic after our days in the country. The local train made a dozen stops in small towns. I looked at peoples’ apartments with laundry and geraniums on the little decks and wondered what high density life would be like in this Mediterranean climate. It got warm in the train; I look off my sweater and the air conditioning came on. As we neared Florence, more and more people boarded and soon our car was totally full.

We hurried out of the massive Florence station, rolled our bags to our guest house and then lugged them up 92 steps to the fourth (top) floor of a 15th Century palazzo. It’s not fancy, but the ceilings are high, it’s quiet and comfortable, and the innkeeper spent a half hour explaining to us where to eat, do laundry, find a charger and so on.

We were anxious to see the Duomo after reading Brunelleschi’s Dome. We headed out to get oriented. The major sites in Florence are all pretty close together, so as we walked in the late afternoon we planned for tomorrow when we will have our Firenze Pass that gets us into the churches, museums and bathrooms.

The Duomo, rising huge above its very small square, astonished us. Tomorrow we’ll go inside. We will cross the Ponte Vecchio, covered with houses and shops, to climb the hill and see the view.

The streets were very crowded; walking side by side was difficult and I actually saw a woman knocked down by a surging crowd. Luxury stores line the narrow streets. Buses, motorcycles, bikes and cars compete with pedestrians. Exhausted by all of this, we decided to have supper and turn in early. A little cafe directly across from our guest house had inviting tables out front so we took our seats under the awning and ordered soup and salad.

The wind started blowing. I held the menu down with the bottle of water. The soup came out. Rain drizzled onto the silverware. We moved closer to the center of the awning. All of a sudden a couple dozen people ran into the restaurant as the rain broke loose. Umbrellas opened. The waiters cleared the other outside tables. Thunder and lighting commenced. We finally aborted and carried our food, drinks and cutlery into the dining room.

Cozy and warm inside, the cabbage soup was comforting. The staff kept checking to be sure we were ok. The rain didn’t stop and out the window a guy hawked colorful plastic rain ponchos. The maitre d explained that these storms are common in Florence and I thought about the flood. After we paid the bill, a waiter asked if he could give us a limoncello, a yellow liquor that appears to be a traditional Italian gesture of kindness. We toasted each other, drank it down and ran home across the street.