Firenze

This ghost hotel is getting me down….I’m sitting in one of the many antique-ish living room spaces in my hotel in Florence, or Firenze, Italy. The hotel has a definitely ghoulish feel about it. It could be the ancient, broken dumb waiter, or the long, mirrored hallway, or the translucent blue desk clerk, but something about this place gives me the heebie-jeebies.

It was the fifth hotel/hostel I came to looking for a room after I got off the train from Bolzano today. The first was a nice hostel, but it was full; the second was too expensive; the third was full, and when I asked, “Well are there any other options?” wondering where I could go next, the woman responded with “No.” There were no other hotels in all of Florence, except for hers. She hurried back into her room. I consulted my Lonely Planet for the fourth, which was full, but the fifth came as a recommendation from the fourth (the Firth of Forth, hahahaha) and here I am. I was scared about the price because it is a hotel, and I have my own room, but I’m only paying 28 Euro for each of the next two nights for a sink and shower in my room (toilet down the hall), breakfast in the morning, my own room and free wireless internet. It’s actually a really good deal, almost too good to be true. Right now, I suspect this hotel is just a front for a ghost smuggling agency which kidnaps the living and takes them to their secret ghost headquarters for slave labor. See, ghosts can’t do labor because they can’t grab stuff, so they have to get the living to do that sort of thing for them. I’m pretty sure I’ll be in a chain gang in the underworld come morning time.

After I checked in, they told me, “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave!” No, not really. After I got situated, I went for a walk around town. I think I ate four helpings of gelato today in the interest of finding the best gelato in Italy. So far…I can’t say, I need to do substantially more research. But I’ll get there, even if it takes forty years, I’ll try every gelato stand in Italy. Anyway, I went to the largest of the many large tourist attractions of Florence today, Il Duomo, the gigantic cathedral in the center of town. I didn’t go inside at first, but I found a path up to the top of the dome you could climb for 8 Euro, and I decided it was worth the money, so, fifteen minutes later, I was breathing heavy, standing at the highest point in Florence. It really is a gorgeous city, like so much of Italy. It is surrounded by rolling green hills dotted with Tuscan villas, and when your eyes fall to the rooftops below you, there is nothing to see but an endless stretch of orange roof tiles and a few churches and castles and the like. I saw a castle on a hill which I would like to visit tomorrow, but I still have to go to the Uffizi gallery and see David tomorrow, so we’ll see how much I can do before I leave on Friday for Roma. I was also able to see the inside of the dome from a couple of walkways along the inner wall. The paintings on the inner dome were magnificent, showing a progression from Hell, through Earth and into Heaven. I’m not sure who did the paintings, but they were spectacular.

I stopped into a restaurant for dinner, perhaps a mistake, for two reasons: one, I’m traveling alone, and it’s weird for a person to eat alone in a restaurant, and two, even though the menu says you can get lasagna for only six Euro, that doesn’t include the drink you have to buy and the tip you have to give and the appetizers you should by and the money which should fall out of your pocket during the meal. The waiter, though, was very nice. I asked for tap water, and he told me they didn’t have any, so I told him I wouldn’t have anything to drink, and he brought me some water anyway, for free. I ate everything they put in front of me, including every breadstick and every drop of pasta sauce, and the bill was only six Euro. I was pretty grateful to the waiter, so I gave him a three Euro tip. So it was still an expensive meal, but not because I was gouged.

Tomorrow is a big day, so I better go to sleep. If I end up in a ghost chain gang…make sure Dateline tells my story.

My pictures are: Florence from above, with the church tower in the foreground, a busy part of the Duomo exterior which I thought made a good picture, and part of the interior dome painting.