{"id":89,"date":"2018-06-03T16:34:44","date_gmt":"2018-06-03T16:34:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/?p=89"},"modified":"2018-06-05T08:18:48","modified_gmt":"2018-06-05T08:18:48","slug":"day-3-story-3-hotels-and-piazzas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/?p=89","title":{"rendered":"Day 2, Story 4: Hotels and Piazzas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hotel Pendini, elegance personified, in the heart of what looks like Florence’s high fashion district.\u00a0 The taxi took us by glass store fronts for Dolce and Gabbana, Stella McCartney, and other big name fashion houses.\u00a0 People in the streets were very well dressed and VERY busy, rushing around with square shopping bags.\u00a0 Carol noted that there was a carousel turning in the square at the end of the street.\u00a0 By that time, I would have guessed it was a hallucination, since we were still on the trajectory that started in Toronto.\u00a0 Spilling out of the taxi and past the hotel’s street door, we saw:\u00a0 STAIRS!\u00a0 With a sign letting us know that the concierge desk was on the 4th floor.\u00a0 Wait — there was also an elevator!\u00a0 A very tiny one. (This will be a theme for these blogs:\u00a0 tiny spaces.)\u00a0 We went up separately, and by the time Carol made it to the desk, I had thrown myself on the mercy of the concierge and found out that they had One Room, with One Bed, for One night only.\u00a0 We took it.<\/p>\n

There was a couch in the room as well, and the staff was happy to make it up as a bed, so we were FINE.\u00a0 BEDS!\u00a0 FINE! We also eventually discovered an Air Conditioning unit, and life was good again.\u00a0 Hotel Pendini is definitely elegant.\u00a0 The ceiling in our room had to have been 20 feet, maybe 25 feet up, and there was a serious chandelier in our room as well.<\/p>\n

\"Image

Hallway of Hotel Pendini<\/p><\/div>\n

Plenty of gilt and plush,\u00a0 and blessed hot water for showers!\u00a0 Cleaned and nearly respectable again, we ventured out for our first meal in Italy, which turned out, ironically, to be at a Chinese restaurant, the nearest place to which we could walk.\u00a0 The next morning, on to Piazza di Santa Maria Novella, and the Hotel Roma!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hotel Pendini, elegance personified, in the heart of what looks like Florence’s high fashion district.\u00a0 The taxi took us by glass store fronts for Dolce and Gabbana, Stella McCartney, and other big name fashion houses.\u00a0 People in the streets were … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-day-2","category-pams-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"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=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98,"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/98"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}