We were first on the waiting list on a Show-of-the-Month Club trip for Budapest and Prague, but with two weeks to go, we were still waiting. Carol was on sabbatical, we had the time, and we needed to go somewhere. Based on the raves from friends and relatives who had been there, we decided on Tuscany and Umbria. I got on the internet and the phone and secured free tickets, using frequent flyer miles. This was no easy feat, as there are never any flights when you want them, but using Sabena, a partner airline that does fly to Florence from Boston, I got the tickets with only two hours' work. Then, research--books, friends, relatives, the internet. Then phone calls to secure hotel rooms. In Florence, they speak English, but everyplace else, only Italian--no French, no English, no Spanish. Ma io parlo Italiano. Using my pretty good French, my corrupted Spanish, and my unbounded chutzpah, I called the small hotels that we had selected. If what I wanted to say wasn't a line in the libretto from some opera, I simply added a "o" to the end of the word, spoke with an Italian accent, and gestured with my hands as I spoke. It worked.
 

In Florence, there were no hotel rooms available. The  Maggio Musicale,Florence's annual May music festival, was on that week. Fortunately, we knew Eda and Marcello Vidale, cousins of our friends, the Briers, who lived in Florence. Through e-mail, they secured us a room at the Pensione Annalena,just next to the Pitti Palace, Boboli Gardens, and the Ponte Vecchio.
 

We left Boston on Monday at 7:30 PM on Sabena and had a good flight to Brussels, arriving there at at 8:30 AM. We had a three-hour layover, and flew to Florence, arriving at 2:30 PM. A quick cab into town, and we were at the Annalena, which turned out to be utterly charming. Annalena was a 15th Century woman who whose husband, a nobleman, was murdered by one of his enemies. Within a year, her young son died. Desolate, she entered a convent and turned her palatial home into a shelter for desperate women. There were a few private apartments in the building, with the Pensione on the "first floor." Everything in Tuscany is on the "first floor." This actually means it is on the second floor, and each floor is about 40 feet high. One does a lot of climbing. The streets of Florence are narrow and congested, noisy with the hum of Vespas. But each building, behind magnificent oak doors,

has a courtyard, insulating the residents from the noise of the streets. The Annalena has its own garden,

and we had a private balcony that overlooked it. Right next door are the magnificently landscaped Boboli Gardens and the Palazzo Pitti. The owner and his family were welcoming and gracious.
..
No hot water the first morning, but an Italian smile and shrug made it all right. $131/night, including breakfast.

When we arrived, we weren't tired. We had no idea what time it was biologically, but in Florence, it was only 3 PM, so we went out to tour the Pitti Palace. This palazzo was owned by the Medicis (the Medicis were the Sopranos of 17th Century Florence, with Cosimo di Medici playing the part of Tony).

All the museum-palaces have different names--those of the original owners--but ultimately they all ended up in the hands of the Medicis. After climbing 500 stairs to the "first floor," we began to see the paintings and sculptures of all the g'dolimof the Renaissance: Tintoretto, Botticelli, Caravaggio, Raphael, Titian, Rubens. You cannot imagine how huge, how immense, how grand. The art is everywhere--on the walls, on the floor, on the ceiling. You look outside, and you see the Boboli Gardens,

you look out the other side, and you see the Duomo in the distance, over the rooftops.

The streets are lined with trattorias, pizzerias, cafés, salumerias, boutiques, tchatchke shops. The people of Florence dress well--elegantly. Forgive me, my compatriots, but they do not look like the Italians of Providence, who are mostly Neapolitan and Sicilian. They are tall, thin, Northern Italians, with long faces, prominent eyes, no cheekbones, and long thin noses. They look like the portraits from the 15th century in all the museums.

Traffic is hectic. Everyone talks about the wild Italian drivers, but this a myth. They are, in fact, excellent drivers. They drive fast, and they leave no room between cars, but they know what they are doing. The only way you can drive dangerously is to drive slowly and carefully, in which case you are certain to cause a serious accident, and everyone will be cursing at you in Italian. By the way, I learned how to curse in Italian:

Va fa 'nculo!= Go fuck yourself.
Dammi bocchino= Give me a blow job.
Vorrai pompino= I'd like a blow job.
Merda = Shit
Finocchio (which means "fennel," not Pinocchio) = faggot
Bucchiac= Cunt (This is a very, very bad Neapolitan word, and may get you knifed. Try it out on an Italian waiter at home and see what happens.)