CPUnk I write right. Right? Aye.

Crazy times on the way to Florence

So, it finally hap­pened — we got the car and I drove in Italy. The car was a lease of a new car (strange but true) — a sort of weird deal that allows us to take a car and then hand it back and then they sell it as a used car or some­thing — I don’t know … but it’s cheaper than rent­ing a car — so we did it.

Dri­ving in Italy
Every­body needs to calm down. Yes — the Ital­ians drive fast, they drive in small cars on small roads with small lanes — but gen­er­ally speak­ing they’re pretty sane. I had much more trou­ble han­dling the road curves at 130kph than I did with the other drivers.

Most of the high­ways are two lanes each way — so the one on the left is the fast lane, the one on the right is the slow lane, pri­mar­ily occu­pied by trucks. Kathy wasn’t a big fan of the prox­im­ity of the trucks as we whizzed by — but over­all she was ok with my dri­ving (com­pli­mented me when we arrived safely even). The biggest thing is, every once in a while, some­one comes up behind you going a jil­lion kabil­lion miles an hour and demands that you get out of his (always his) way. Well, that’s the cor­rect thing to do in that sit­u­a­tion — and don’t sig­nal while you’re chang­ing lanes either — that’s just not done. Once the crazy per­son flies by — you’re back to dri­ving like a nor­mal per­son at about 75mph (130kph).

Inter­est­ingly — peo­ple will come up behind you on the fast lane, flash at you, honk even, TAILGATE like there’s no tomor­row (a lit­tle tap on the brakes is fun to do — they hate that ) … but they won’t, just won’t, pass you on the right. Never ever ever. So you gotta get out of their way or they just try to scare you more.

I saw one (count it one) Fer­rari on the high­way. Meh.

Assisi
So — after a long drive, with a long detour because I missed a turn — we got to Assisi — where St. Fran­cis is from (founder of the Fran­cis­can order (think Friar Tuck)).

We got to the Basil­ica San Francesco (St. Fran­cis Church) and were get­ting ready to love the art­work, when we saw that a mass was com­plet­ing in one of the tran­scepts. We jumped in, and had a chance to take part in the Holy Com­mu­nion at Assisi (!) … for Chris­tians, that’s pretty cool. Kinda like show­ing up in Mem­phis just as U2 is record­ing a con­cert and being allowed to sit and lis­ten. Just cool is all.

After the Mass, Nate and I vis­ited St. Fran­cis’ tomb, which was cool — and then we all wan­dered around for a bit and then headed to Florence.

Firenze
In Italy, Flo­rence is called Firenze. We drove (and drove and drove) and got to Firenze around 6pm — at which point we started look­ing for our hotel. Dri­ving in Flo­rence is freaky deeky … the roads go in crazy direc­tions — the major­ity of them are semi-pedestrian only — it’s all a mess.

Well — we found our hotel after some crazy dri­ving … and I headed in. First I climbed the 20 steps to get to the first floor, at which point (with the fam­ily wait­ing in the car), I entered the tiny ele­va­tor (tiny, like 4 square feet — like I could only take one suit­case in with me if I tried — like suck in your gut — tiny) — and rode THAT up two more sto­ries — and then got out of the tiny tiny ele­va­tor into the tiny tiny hall­way to talk to the tiny tiny old lady behind the tiny tiny desk next to the sign with the TWO tiny tiny stars on it.

Time to leave. Smile, back away from the lit­tle old lady — there is no way we’re going through this mad­ness to get the lug­gage to the rooms — 20 STEEP steps, to the ele­va­tor, to the next floor, etc etc? No … no no no. G’bye. Mistake.

So, I head back down the tiny ele­va­tor, and see Angie com­ing up the steep stairs — and she’s got that look on her face like things are bad and get­ting worse. I turn the cor­ner on the steep stairs (did I men­tion they were curved?) and down at the door, Kathy is try­ing politely to explain to all the angry Ital­ians behind her that are being blocked by our car that her hus­band has just gone into the hotel and will (shout shout shout) he’s going to be right back (shout, honk, shout) … and there’s a line of taxis behind the parked car on this tiny tiny street — and it even looks like maybe some peo­ple are get­ting out of their cars and com­ing towards my wife.

I’d like to pause here for a sec­ond and ask you to envi­sion the scene. I’ve come to the door of this tiny tiny hotel, and my wife is being yelled at by a bunch of angry men in a dif­fer­ent lan­guage who seem to be begin­ning to pos­ture towards her — and she’s com­pletely fraz­zled … and well… got the scene in your head? Ok. Please imag­ine for your­selves what the proper response would be. Ok. Read on.

Being that I don’t speak any Ital­ian, I had to go to the uni­ver­sal lan­guage of “back the hell off or I’m gonna rip your freakin’ Ital­ian head off and shove it into this guy’s ear.” I didn’t direct that sen­ti­ment at any par­tic­u­lar person’s direc­tion … nor was I seek­ing any direct con­fronta­tion — but almost instantly, my brain-stem needed to com­mu­ni­cate to this crowd of for­eign­ers (this seems to hap­pen to me a lot in for­eign coun­tries (shout out to Brett)) … well … I needed to com­mu­ni­cate, ani­mal to ani­mal, that my wife was not only not alone — but she was mar­ried to THIS guy, so get back in your car and shutu­pay­ouface. So, well … I did — and I regret that it also involved a lit­tle “color” as well. Ask any­body there (includ­ing Kathy) — I acted cor­rectly (though she did just tell me that I swore more than I should have — which I agree to completely).

Soooo … any­way… she got in the car, I got in the car and I was just about to start the car and drive away — when some cop comes to the door of the car and starts yelling at me in Ital­ian (prob­a­bly say­ing some­thing sim­i­lar to what I was say­ing to every­one else). So I showed him the proper respect (after telling him that I didn’t under­stand him at all) — and he waved me away, I drove off, and well … we needed to find a bet­ter hotel.

We drove around a lit­tle crazy for a minute or two — and all of the sud­den … my old friends Prada, Gucci, Cartier and the lot started show­ing up … we were in the right dis­trict sud­denly. Well — we just had to find a dif­fer­ent hotel around here and we’d be fine. After a lit­tle cool­ing off all around — we pulled over in front of Cartier just as it was clos­ing. I got out, and as a woman was com­ing out, I asked her if she could help me.

“Sure.”, she said.
“Well, we had a mis­take hap­pen, and we ended up at the wrong hotel and we need to know where a good hotel is.”
“Oh, this one right here is great. You could also try the Savoy in the square over there, but this one is much bet­ter.”
“Wow — super — thanks. We’ll try to come by Cartier tomor­row and shop.”
“Great, my name is Cyn­thia, look me up, ok?”
“You bet. Thanks.”

So… now we’re stay­ing at a Five Star — L hotel … I’m not sure what the “dash L” means — but it’s nice here. The kids have their own room, we have ours — all is well … we’re get­ting our rest.

Crazy Chances
Once we’d set­tled a bit — Tatiana, our new best friend at the front desk (she’s the one who saved the day and found the rooms for us) sent us to a restau­rant she really likes about 5 min­utes away. We went there — the food was nice, the ambiance was quaint — the folks next to us were Amer­i­can (as were most of the patrons, actu­ally), and we chat­ted them up for a minute or two. Kinda fun.

After din­ner — we were walk­ing back to the hotel — when we stopped because a fam­ily was tak­ing pic­tures of each other on the street and we didn’t want to walk through the photo. They smiled and waved us on — and we headed on our way. As we were walk­ing by them, I said out loud, “these peo­ple look really famil­iar to me — seri­ously” — and we all laughed, just a pass­ing thing, I guess.

Kathy, the kids and I kept walk­ing and I stopped, then headed back to them … hav­ing a vague idea…

They were kind of scratch­ing their heads and say­ing, “You know…” … and I asked them, “Are you Stow­ells?” … and they burst out with “YES! We are!”

It ends up that we just had a chance meet­ing with my sister’s husband’s sis­ter — a woman I haven’t seen since the wed­ding over 15 years ago. I may have seen them at a Chris­ten­ing or some­thing — but wow. We just bumped into each other in … Flo­rence. How fun is that?!!!

What a weird day.