Karen Maloney's Dispatch: Turkey, Florence and Rome

Dear Friends, I last wrote on Saturday night as we prepared for an early start the next morning to fly to Florence. Everything went smoothly, although the hotel had forgotten to book our car, and then overcharged us, but rang us as we were just leaving & refunded the money! The airport was deserted early in the morning, we checked in and our only wait was to go through Immigration, where it seemed all the clerks were late for work. When we finally got to our clerk, he was most suspicious of the middle of the Australian passport, but eventually let us through. We found our gate lounge (only 4 overseas ones) and settled down to wait for our plane.

Wes went roaming on his phone, something we are not allowing ourselves to do very often in the hope of getting a manageable phone bill on our return. He discovered Barbara on Skype for the first time since she had left, so had a long chat with her, and was relieved to know that she was OK; that Gail had sorted out seating issues on the flight, and that she was comfortable & enjoying catching up with her father, Bob, and his wife, Viv. We haven’t seen Gail & Terry on Skype, nor have they responded to our emails, so we hope they are enjoying the South Island of NZ, while Barbara is in Palmerston North.

Pigeon Holes in our Cave

We were packed in like sardines in our little plane to Vienna, but the flight went quickly and we were excited to be flying over Austria, which looked beautiful from the air. We were thinking of our friend, Hanna, and hoping that one day we would all be in Vienna at the same time. Then reality set in – there was a stampede from the bus into the airport and we tried to find where to go for our flight to Florence. A friendly girl pointed us to the haphazard queue at Immigration, and sure enough, we needed to join it even though we were in transit. The surly officer didn’t even look at either of us when we eventually got to her window, but we smiled sweetly, retrieved our passports and set off in search of our Gate Lounge. We arrived just as our flight was boarding and discovered that Ron had booked us in Business Class & we were the only ones! The flight was 90 minutes and we were well-looked after in our little Fokker Friendship.

We were hugely disappointed to discover that our luggage had not made the flight and was still in Vienna, and would possibly arrive later that night or the next day. Our driver, Gianluca, took us to our beautiful hotel, Residenza del Moro, previously a palace, where the staff were sympathetic and upgraded us to a Suite. Our Suite, translated, is Lemon House, and we are thrilled to bits with it. We have a huge room which is our bedroom & lounge; then a dressing-room, bathroom & private garden. Wes ordered tea & coffee and later a bottle of red wine; we showered, rinsed out our underwear and went to sleep.

Afternoon tea in our walled garden

The next morning we met our Guide, Tanya, who is an American-Italian, with a Norwegian mother. She is in her 50s, passionate about the history of Italy and torn between Florence & California. Gianluca drove us on a City Tour which comprised the Hilltowns of Florence and included entrances to an Archaeological Area & Museum & the Villa Gamberaia Gardens, where we saw our first Lemon House. It rained for a while, so we spent some time in coffee shop learning about each other & what we hoped to get from our time together.

Later we had lunch together at a small restaurant where we could see into the kitchen. We enjoyed our meals – salad followed by seafood pasta for Tanya & me, whereas Wes went the red meat route! After lunch we walked back to our hotel, where we discovered our bags had not yet arrived, much to our disgust. Any plans for walking during the afternoon were shelved, as we decided to stay around & put pressure on the reception staff to keep ringing the airport every hour to see what had happened. Finally at 7.45pm, both suitcases turned up, intact and no worse for wear. We realised that as the planes are tiny, perhaps they had not fitted into our flight, but it would have been good to have been told the truth from the start!

This morning we rose early and I had the chance to speak with Viva, who was expecting my call & had stayed up later than usual to receive it. Her eye has not improved, so she sees another specialist tomorrow morning. She had a lovely visit from Terry yesterday and sounded quite good considering she was very tired.

After a light breakfast, we went walking around Florence with Tanya. We learnt some more history, visited some beautiful churches, lit a candle for Jim Stynes, and another for Perc, Dot & Ray, and finally, after visiting a beautifully restored Tower House, found ourselves staring in awe at the wonderful statue of David, in the Accademia. Tanya had to leave us at 1pm, as she had some students to look after during the afternoon, so she gave us advice on a good lunch-spot – also called Accademia, where we had a salad with pears & honey, followed by pizzas, mine with truffles and Wes’s with salami. We enjoyed a lovely bottle of red, the waiters were attentive & spoke good English & we hope to get back there. On the way home, we had our first gelati – Tanya would not let us go just anywhere & we had been instructed to go to a little place with a sign saying ICE CREAM, where the gelati is made fresh each day & not piled up high in the window. Wes had chocolate & almond & I enjoyed yoghurt & pistachio. We then bought some tonic water & chips in a supermarket and finally went into a delicatessen/greengrocer, where we bought a beautiful soft cheese & a bottle of red.

We arrived back at our hotel to find a basket of fruit in our room – pears, kiwifruit & apples, so we won’t starve over the next few days. We met another couple, Yanks, named John & Patty, who are the only other visitors here, then sat in our garden with pots of tea & coffee talking about our morning. We find ourselves so very sad about the death of Jim Stynes – I regard him as a modern-day saint and feel very privileged to have met him, and Wes has been surprised at how affected he has been as well. Thanks to Jane & Carol for updating us on him. We are thrilled he is getting a State Funeral & hope it is televised so we can tape it.