The place that I am staying is quite lovely. Because I am staying for 40 days, more or less, they gave me a nice rate of about $65/night. It would have been much cheaper to rent an apartment, but less desirable. All of the cheaper apartments are really just a room shared with other people. I couldn’t find any “single” apartments within the time-frame I wanted.
This hotel is in a huge mansion, and my room is down at the bottom floor, the only room on that level, in fact. So at night it is completely quiet, and I can hear nothing – which is quite a change from everywhere else I’ve been. It is large, with a double bed, and lots of hardwood furniture. And it has a fan, thank goodness.
The bathroom, though, is perhaps my favorite part. With white walls and blue tile, it has a large window that opens on a private garden in the back, so that when I shower I feel as though I am staying as a guest in a large chateau on the Italian foothills. I hear only the birds, the winds that blows through the windows, and the water pressure is lovely. I do not think I could have imagined better!
When I leave each day, I walk past the Boboli Gardens, and cross the Ponte Vecchio on my way to the city center. I think of you each time I walk across, knowing that your spirit has visited there often. Then I pass, go north a little ways, and have a cappuccino in the Piazza della Republica, one of my most frequented areas. There is a nice fountain there, the post office, a bank, and a movie theater. The other night I watched “2 Fast 2 Furious” in Italian. Well, movies about car racing do not need words, is all I can say.