Floundering in Florence

(by Carol)

I woke up to warm sunlight pouring through the windows, glittering off the glass prisms of a huge chandelier that hung over our beds.  We slept well at Hotel Pendini, even with that giant, beautiful, death-trap chandelier hanging above us.  Behind the desk, is a picture of a lady.  The name Pedini was beneath her image, on the frame.

There is a plaque on the frame now that reads [A…?] Pendini.

Hotel Pendini is on Piazza della Repubblica, today the heart of life in the city. Two thousand years ago, however, it was a Roman military camp set up to control nearby Fiesole. It was the first urban settlement upon which Florence was consequently built.

The neighbourhood around the piazza was, for many long years, the Jewish ghetto of Florence and the piazza itself was once a local market. After the Unification of Italy, when Florence was named capital in 1865, the piazza underwent major changes. In an effort to beautify the historical centre and imitate the glory of Paris, then Europe’s most elegant and glamorous capital, the old medieval homes were pulled down to make way for new modern buildings.

In 1879 work was completed on a palazzo with a grand arch where a wealthy Florentine lady of the Pendini family decided to found a residence for travellers. It still proudly bears her name.

Since then, the hotel has always been managed in a family style.

I can’t remember the name of the Pendini woman in the picture—possibly Alfonsa—but I like that our first night in Italy was spent at a hotel founded by a woman back in the late 1800s.  (I might even make note of it for the class I’m teaching, since it has a feminist focus.)

Anyway, feeling good and rested, and with reservations set for the next two nights, we re-gathered our luggage, and cane, and walker, and orangutans, and breakfast cereals, and kitchen sinks, and . . . .  Pam took one elevator and I took the other: Pam won that race.  We took a taxi to the new hotel.  As we were driving away, I caught a picture of the merry-go-round that was located near Hotel Pendini.  I wasn’t impressed, and you can see why (below).

(by Carol)

Sooooooo: the plan was to catch a train from Florence airport to Pisa, and spend the first few nights there.  Why? Just because! Pam said that she wanted to go to Pisa, and I thought that it might be nice to be in a slightly quiet, somewhat country setting for a few days, to recover from all that flying and adjust to this adventure.

MY OH MY! He’s so strong!

Besides, I wanted to get a picture of Pam doing what this guy is doing, or maybe have her appear leaning against the tower, or maybe some sort of actually original humor picture that I can’t even think of at the moment.

Anyway, we arrived at the Florence airport.  Baby and grandma were once again awake and bouncing.  I looked across the aisle at Pam, who had this look on her face that made me think that she was getting fed up with flying, at this point, and I think I returned the look with a “me too” look of my own.  We had to climb down steep steps from the plane, and at the bottom, my walker was nowhere to be seen.  Pam hailed an official, who informed us that my walker would be waiting for me at the baggage claim.  “No!” I said firmly, “I checked it in at the steps entering the plane.  I need it now!”  So she scooted away to the back of the plane, where they were unloading luggage, and brought me my walker.  It was sunny, somewhat hot, and slightly humid.  We were exhausted and ready to pass out (I imagined) in comfortable beds in well air conditioned rooms.  That was, however, not to be.

Florence’s airport is tiny, stuffy, not well ventilated.  We entered at the baggage claim, collected our luggage, and walked a little bit into another large room, that was clearly the exit room.  So, there’s my (admittedly poor) impression of the airport: a short landing strip, a small room that held three baggage claim terminals, a little hallway, and a larger and very crowded room from which people exited to catch a bus or, more reasonably, a taxi.

Our taxi driver was a delightful and skillful driver, who informed us that he has been driving a taxi for twenty years.  In the front passenger seat was a young man (with awesome long hair, by the way), who was in training—learning the streets and their various connections.  They took us to the Santa Maria Novella train station, which is situated in the historical center of Florence.  It was packed.  I mean: PACKED!  There were various groups of young people sitting

When does this train station ever look this empty? When?! WHEN?! I say never!

on the floor because there was nowhere else to sit.  We figured out how to get tickets to Pisa and found our way to the right track—weaving our luggage, cane, and walker through the crowds.  The train had steps: in each train car, you could take three steps up to a level of seats, or you could take three steps down to a level of seats.  We really enjoyed that challenge, throwing suitcases, bags, a walker and a cane into seats beside us.  And then we were off!

Pisa Central Platform

At this point, we were so exhausted (and my ripped toenail was really hurting) that we were pretty much hanging to the ends of our mental ropes, maybe even ready to hang ourselves with them.  Okay, maybe that’s a bit too dramatic, but I was feeling pretty dramatic at the time.  Pam watched the countryside float past the windows.  I fell asleep.

And then we arrived!  We pulled all our baggage off the train with high hopes of release and returned happiness, and this is what we saw: stairs going down from the platform into a dark abyss.  No elevator, and thus (for us, with our luggage, walker and cane) no exit.

The humidity had increased.  It was hot, cloudy, and sticky, and we were hot, sweaty and miserable. I sat with the luggage and my walker while Pam took her cane and bravely huffed down the stairs to seek help, or at least directions to an elevator.

My toenail got ripped in one of the lower side holes.

(by Carol)

Upon arriving at the Brussels airport, they made rather a fuss over us: ordering wheelchairs for us, which I very gruffly refused and to which Pam responded with similar disdain. We made our way up away from the plane, me with my walker and Pam with her cane.  It was a long and winding road (sorry, couldn’t resist) walk up to the exit, roughly two flights up from the ground level of the plane.  (Hurray! No stairs!)  At the top, we were greeted by a man who insisted that we hop onto his golf-cart, declaring that it really was too far a walk for us to the next gate.  (Note: after she boarded the golf cart, he said to her, “There you are, my lady!”)  We  talked with him about whether or not it was too far walk with Pam’s cane and my walker (because I had this ancient memory of the Brussels airport, which was of a rather small and cramped, and dark space in which people were crammed, and there was only a gift shop and a small restaurant), and while we were talking, I had casually slipped one of my feet out of its shoe.  I was wearing crocks. Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying attention, and when I shoved my foot back into the shoe, my pinky toenail caught one of the side holes and I ripped the nail partially off.  “Ouch!” I yelled.  “!!@##@$#!!!” I thought quietly to myself.  But we had to keep moving, so I just did what one does when there’s no time for pain: ignored it.  Maybe the attendant heard my mental “!!@##@$#!!!!” because he didn’t call me “My lady.”  Oh well.

Brussels Airport

Anyway, the golf cart zoomed off as he rattled off in Dutch (I think) to someone about the “American Dames” —racing past people, dodging about the halls, making near misses, until he arrived at the customs, where we were ushered to the front of the lines, again, and people glared at us, again.  We got our stamps, went through, and were greeted by a seemingly calmer (if not also younger) man, who drove just as crazy-fast, arrived at what we all thought was the correct gate (by the way, literally miles from our arrival gate), discovered that, in the midst of our journey, the flight’s departure had been switched to another gate, but that new gate hadn’t been announced yet, so we had to wait, sitting in the cart, waiting, waiting, watching, wondering if we would actually have time to stop somewhere and buy some Brussels chocolate, and realizing that we probably wouldn’t, and then becoming concerned that maybe the flight had been cancelled, or that it was already boarding and we were the only ones who didn’t know where the right gate was located, and ….. ahhhhh!

Bing! The departure gate appeared on the board and off we zoomed, right past the rich smells of chocolate floating out of a store into the general airport air, straight to the gate, and we boarded the plane five minutes later.  On the plane, we were each given aisle seats, directly across from each other.  Unfortunately, I sat next to this grandmother who was holding a very cute baby, whom she allowed to invade my space in all sorts of ways, including bouncing him from my right leg to the left leg of the man sitting to her right (apparently the grandfather/husband).  But the baby was cute, so I just pretended to fall asleep, and soon both he and grandma did as well.

My toe hurt.  I hadn’t gotten the chance to empty my bladder between flights, the plane was crowded, and I was tired from a very restless pseudo on the plane.  It wasn’t very difficult for me to fall asleep on this final flight of our journey.

This is me, at the age of 12.

(by Carol)

I live in Ravenna–Ravenna, Ohio.  Here are a few pictures of some of the views from my home:

This is my front porch in Ravenna, Ohio.

This is my backyard, from which Daisy is looking to come inside.

This is Scott.

I live in my little home in Ravenna, Ohio—which I share with my husband, Scott, and Daisy the Dog—and I teach at Kent State University—Trumbull.  Last summer, I proposed to teach a course for the Kent State University Florence Summer Institute, an upper level English/Women’s Studies course called Adoption & Adaptation: Florence Feminism and English Literature and Film.  Actually, what happened was that I asked Scott, yelling to him from my little office in our house to him in his little office in our house (in Ravenna, Ohio) “Hey! Do you want me to propose to teach a course in Florence?” and he replied, “Oh yeah! Let’s do it!”  So I thought for a good while and came up with this special topics course idea, to be cross-listed as both a Department of English course and a Women’s Studies course (giving students a choice for how they wished to earn the credit: for an English major or for a Women’s Studies minor).  Scott is also a professor, but he teaches mathematics at The University of Akron, so he was going to come along to stay with me for part of the month-long adventure, during which time Daisy the dog would stay with my mother, at her house in Wisconsin.  That was the plan, if the course was approved, which (to my surprise) it was, and then (again, to my surprise) enough students registered for the course for it to not be cancelled.  However, the illusion of control was not to be.

First, Scott hurt his back (again) and there was absolutely, positively, no-fucking-way he was going to be able to sit on a plan for more than 20 minutes, much less for several hours.  This made me very sad.

However, second, my friend Pam was able to take his place (and his plane ticket).  This made me much happier.  Pam is retired from teaching at Siena College—located not in Siena, Italy, but in Loudonville, New York.  I’ve known Pam for a long time, but that’s another story.  The adventure, then, begins with meeting Pam at the Toronto, Canada airport.

The cheapest way to get from northeastern Ravenna, Ohio (USA) to Florence, Tuscany (Italy): book a flight from Toronto, Canada to Florence, Italy.  I got to Toronto with a shortish flight from Akron-Canton Airport to Toronto.  It wasn’t that short: I flew from Akron-Canton to Washington, D.C. and then caught another flight from Regan National to Toronto.

I should point out that I have mobility issues.  I use a walker.  It’s an awesome walker: big (6″) wheels in the back, with even bigger  (10″) wheels in the front.  It allows me to walk at a normal-to-fast pace, and I’ve even taken it on mostly level hiking trails.  However, there is no getting around the fact that I need a bit of help, at times, such as being permitted to board the plan with parents-with-children.  What I don’t need is what the stewardess gave me in flying from Washington, D.C. to Toronto: she stopped me from walking to my seat (having just checked-in my walker and holding onto the backs of seats to help me keep my balance) to carefully, slowly speak to me about the location of exits and so forth, as though my slow walking equaled slow thinking.  But she was very nice, otherwise, and clearly meant well, so I wasn’t too bothered by it.

After a bit of wandering about the Toronto airport, with my little computer bag and my overnight bag resting on the seat of my walker, and my giant suitcase wheeling beside my walker (awkward, but not impossible, to manage), I found Pam.  Her sisters drove her up from their home in Buffalo, New York.

We had a little meal and then it was time to board the plane to Brussels.  Again, assistance was very nice: the stewardess came to find both of us and allowed us to board first, much to the annoyance of some people who clearly felt like we were cheating, cutting in line.  However, going down the ramp to the plane, she tried to help me along by grabbing the front of the walker and pulling me faster than I could walk (trying to make me trot, I think).  “Don’t help me, please.  Let go.”  She complied immediately.  What was she thinking?  I don’t know.  After that, however, the rest of the flight—though long and exhausting (as it is for most anyone flying overseas) was relatively easy.  At Brussels, they made quite a fuss over us (Pam was using her cane), and zipped us off on a golf cart across the airport to catch the final plane, to Florence.

We left Canada at night (6:00pm) and arrived in Italy in the morning of the next day.  The sun was shining, and it was a bit warm and slightly sticky outside.  It was good to be out of a plane.  It was good to breathe fresh air.