Planes and boats and trains.\u00a0 Well, no boats (yet).\u00a0 However, it was a pretty rigorous trip to get from Albany to Florence involving driving and being driven, planes (two), golf carts (two?\u00a0 three?), shuttle buses (two) taxis (three so far) and trains — two, which is a story in itself.\u00a0 Also hoofing it through vast airports and narrow streets with all our baggage — literal, not emotional.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/milo-292x300.jpg\")
Milo and his camel.<\/p><\/div>\n
I drove from Albany, where I had just finished packing up 30 years of books and teaching paraphernalia (upon my retirement from Siena College), to Buffalo, where my sister Susan and her wife Kay live.\u00a0 They had offered to keep my spoiled chihuahua with them and their dog, Stella, while I’m gone.\u00a0 After some research into shuttle buses from Buffalo to Toronto, they figured out a way for them to drive me to Toronto.\u00a0 Susan was running a public event at her place of work, Niagara University’s Castellani Museum, so Kay and I showed up to participate at 10:00 am.\u00a0 It was a lecture on Emily Dickinson and a woman sculptor, part of a series on women in art, and it was good.\u00a0 After a quick picnic lunch (thanks for the sandwiches, Kay), we drove from Lewiston to Toronto, and they let me off at the main terminal.<\/p>\n
After discovering that my phone battery was dead and that there were apparently no charging stations nearby, I headed towards the gate we were given, and immediately ran into Carol pushing her walker, laden with bags.\u00a0 I had brought my cane and can attest to how necessary some additional help — early boarding — can be!\u00a0 The Brussels Air people were helpful to a fault (see Carol’s blog), even expressing outrage when our seats to Brussels turned out to be in the very back row — row 46, to be precise.\u00a0 It was the usual cramped, hot, uncomfortable trek over the pond, but we were on our way.<\/p>\n
Brussels airport:\u00a0 thank the goddess for those beeping carts and their drivers.\u00a0 That airport seems to be about 5 miles from end to end, and of course, we had to get from one end to another, then to a shuttle bus that took us far away to a field where the plane to Florence stood.\u00a0 Once in Florence, we snagged a taxi to the train station, intending to finish our trip in Pisa, where Carol had booked a hotel for us until the apartment where we will eventually be staying was ready.\u00a0 Alas, it was not to be . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Planes and boats and trains.\u00a0 Well, no boats (yet).\u00a0 However, it was a pretty rigorous trip to get from Albany to Florence involving driving and being driven, planes (two), golf carts (two?\u00a0 three?), shuttle buses (two) taxis (three so far) … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-day-1","category-pams-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76,"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions\/76"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/54"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}