Oct. 24, 2008
Florence, Italy
It's mid-night black in the heart of Florence, and I am typing this by the light of a flashlight hung from our table's umbrella. It's so mild that we can sit out in the evening to eat (or write) without being thoroughly chilled and uncomfortable -- this going further and further south as autumn sets in really works!!
Having said that, our first day away from the home comforts and warm welcome of the Adolph's was a bit of an adventure. We dragged ourselves out of France quite unwillingly; even after more than a month exploring Provnce and the South we still felt there was so much more to see. We really loved every minute of it, and we all felt our French improving through use -- and parting from Dagmar and Winfred was as painful as if we had known them all our lives.
So all in all, our moods mirrored the cold misty weather outside as we drove through the final eastern miles of France, and then on into Italy. The Italian-French border does NOT show Italy at its best -- and as we needed to put on some miles we motored straight through and south towards Pisa. We arrived in the town itself late in the afternoon, and in uncharacterisictally feckless moods we decided against prudence: we could pitch a tent in the dark, after all, and we were all keen to see the famous Leaning Tower.
And it really was worth the detour... it looks just like a big, squodgy wedding cake slapped together by a pasrty chef who had been into the cooking sherry! It is amazing that it has kept that slant for so many centuries; it started to lean before it's final tier was even built, and continued to fall off vertical for hundreds of years until 1986, when it was 4 degrees past the place deemed physically possible by all experts, and they closed it down and went to work propping it up. Thanks to 20th century engineering skills (and equipment) it was slightly straightened and shored up against catastrope. They still limit the number of entrants to 30 at a time, though!
The kids (and Caelan in particular) were all fascinated by their first encounter with street vendors from Northern Africa selling rip-off watches and purses and always ready with a price "just for you". By the time we tore ourselves away from the delights of haggling, it was well and truly dark. No problem -- we had managed to find a Tourist Info booth and actually had a map to a campground that was still open for the season. It took a bit of 'zigging and zagging' -- every country marks its roads in different ways and none of them are even remotely the same, so we were still working out Italy -- but we found our
way eventually. We parked, rolled out our tent that had just enjoyed a nice long holiday... and disaster struck. Somehow the tent had been wedged into the van in such a way that the connecting strings within the poles had rubbed against the metal supports until they frayed and broke in multiple places. And by this time it is pitch black and everyone was cold, starving, and tired after a long day's travel. Eeek... "these are the times that make for good stories,' I kept telling myself. In the end, we laid out the groundsheet at the end of the car, opened the hatch, and draped the fly over top, securing it at the bottom with our bags. It wasn't the Shangri-la, and its a good thing that the weather had warmed up as much as it had, but we managed. Cachell and I spent the night clinging to each other with the sleeping bag pulled as tightly around our heads as possible -- we discovered a big slug making its way up her bag as we were settling in. (Ugh!)
But we survived -- our dodgy stove had a small and unexpected explosion as I was putting a meal together, so having to sleep in a makeshift shelter seemed trivial in the face of what we could have had to deal with if any of us had been any closer to it than we were. And now we've got ourselves settled in Florence, and we're ready to explore this beautiful city and Tuscan countryside (not to mention the Designer Outlet Centre we passed on the way into town!).
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