In which I arrive in Florence and am betrayed by my trusty plastic steed

I hadn’t slept in 48 hours, I stank like the armpit of Airbus A330, the cigarette smoke of Florence was abrasing my lungs, and finally Vince and I were staring down at the specifically requested twin beds only to find them zip-tied together. I think both of us were convinced that we were bound to get lost somewhere between three countries, three airports, two continents, two flights, one train, and one on-foot trek. But we navigated Dulles International Airport perfectly. Vince’s first flight was not a disappointment.

Dublin at 4am was more challenging than DC at 5pm since I lost my vision when I removed my contacts and Vince lost his hearing due to pressure in his ears. So, we squinted and yelled as if playing a retarded game of badminton during a squall, and (as Vince put it) “together we were Helen Keller.” 

Neither of us could sleep on the plane. We both performed the classic maneuvers in which you try to unlock sleep by shifting through a series of the most deformed positions imaginable. You stuff your head down on the tray in front of you and your backbone stabs upward through your skin like a stegosaurus plate; you curl yourself around your legs and your feet fall asleep but the rest of your body misses the memo; you lull dangerously close to the stranger’s shoulder beside you and then really must pretend to be sleeping even when the armrest is about ready to bisect you at the waist; you prop your face on one levitating arm to relieve a stiffening neck; and if you’re Vince you give up and become 100% consumed by beating a PR in Candy Crush on the screen in front of you. But this is first-world travel. And it’s fun.

At the Fiumicino airport in Rome, you become aware of the fact that every Italian around you looks like George Clooney or Gal Gadot and you slink into a cold, littered corner of the train station to kill an hour looking homeless. When you discover an open doorway of blessed green outdoors, you make a bolt for it. Vince nearly sheds all luggage and bounds slow-mo towards the promising exit like a homesick hobbit. Then the Polizia show up and shoo you back to your homeless corner. When we boarded our train, we quite realistically splattered on, barely able to lift our luggage up the steps. However, once seated, the train was very conducive to sleep and even with fanciful, rolling, Italian vineyards flashing by each eyelid weighed a kilogram. And then Florence. Firenze itself. Santa Maria Novella literally belched us out into a street jammed with travelers, vendors, smells, and foreign language. There were sounds of ancient bells ringing in ancient domes interrupted by the occasional non-American ambulance wail. Paranoid of pickpockets and mafia, we began trucking it down the street, pausing to glance over the rooftops at the Duomo which despite its gargantuan size, has perfected the jump scare at corners or silently peers at you from the ends of alleyways. Even when in direct sight, the Duomo is an unbelievable thing. Like a trick of the eye. My directions on Apple Maps and Booking.com were failing me and every time I slowed down Vince would send up a tirade of “Go, go, go! Ahhh! Kinley! Go!” That pro tip about blending in and acting like you know what you’re doing was being executed in the poorest way possible. Finally, we target a chipped number 11 plaque beside a generic door with a brass knocker and we trundle across the cobblestones and potholes dodging people and vehicles. The streets are narrow and bottlenecked and if you can't stand your ground, you’re likely to get whisked away either by hundreds of pedestrians or plastered across the windshield of a bus. When we punched in the code the lock clicked and Vince and I fell through the entrance, landing at the bottom of a staircase as the door boomed shut on our backs. The world seemed to buzz and fall still and my relief in having gotten this far buckled my knees and slid me down the wall like a window crawler where I sat laughing till my stomach hurt.

Turns out only the headboards were zip-tied together. The beds slid apart when Vince kicked one. We both took the best showers of our lives (but I used all the hot water first), I pulled into my new Frog & Toad sweatshirt for the first time of many (thank you, Larayna!) and then leaned out the window over the street below. Very few passersbys ever looked up, so I was able to observe in peace. Florence has the best people-watching of anywhere I’ve ever been. I had to start an album called “Classic Italian Men” which has become ever more inclusive, filling with pictures of women and foreigners alike. Smokers, occasional nuns, loud college students, tourists with rattling luggage, and dramatic Italians walked the skinny sidewalks. Others rode scooters, bikes, cars, and buses, and from our window one story above the street, we could hear absolutely everything. When Vince conked out and sent up a snore, I lay in bed watching the beams of headlights shoot through the slats in the shutters and send moving grids across the ceiling.

Finally, after a hard cry to the tune of Puff the Magic Dragon, I fell asleep. There were three different times I woke up during the night. Once around 11 pm when a new “hotel” guest moved in next door and began a raucous four-hour speaker-phone conversation with a male voice. The conversation was 90% flirtatious laughter. My weary yet sleepless self somehow got it in my brain that her name was Anna and I’ve stuck with it ever since. Then Vince woke up, went to the bathroom, popped some pills (Advil for a headache), scrolled on his phone, and went back to bed. I tried listening to hymns and using the bathroom and finally drifted back onto a choppy sea of noisy sleep. The second time I woke up it was Anna's fault again. I'm glad she was enjoying herself but for crying out loud in the ever-loving night, go to bed woman! The third time I woke up because it was quiet and the silence was so powerful and unfamiliar that it jolted me awake. At 8 o’clock Vince and I both woke up and still lying horizontal talked about how unbelievable it was that we were in Italy, how rejuvenated we felt, and how irritating Anna was.

I thought Florence was pretty good on day one. But I'm on week three and it’s getting better. Like good shoes, wine, cheese, and Italian men in general – age improves it. In some ways, Florence feels like a fancy maze. The tall, narrow, conjoined, stone buildings block out all but long slivers of sky, and there is little to no greenery.

Yesterday I was walking back home after two hours of lecture by Francesco Maria Petrini – a giant, hairy beast of a man with untucked dress shirts, long greasy hair, a unibrow, a booming voice, a table-pounding fist, a funky smell, and a slightly nihilistic/worship-the-internet approach to life. He’s fascinating. So are his lectures. In this class, he teaches the Iliad and the Odyssey, convinced he does not speak English. When a student by the last name of Culpepper suggested that heroes are usually attractive, Petrini exploded in heavily accented exclamations. “So fuh-reeking troo. They’re des-pair-et-lee attractiff and beautifool. Luke at the movie ‘Troy.’ I haf seen them ALL and nobody could be a hero like wass Brad. Brad the Mighty Pitt!” Eden, the opera student beside me, choked on a laugh and Brennan, on my other side, smiled like a more masculine version of Elijah Wood. So, with Petrini still ringing in my ears along with a cringe song called “I Enjoy Being A Girl” singing in my air pods, I strolled back home smiling. The bells of the Santa Maria del Fiore were resonating under my feet, an Italian shopkeeper stood on his stoop and smiled back with a lift of the cigarette as I walked by, and the daily 5:30 pm starling murmuration rolled through the sky above me. Too good. Too good.

Not even dismounting the plastic carousel horse later in the evening and gouging my thigh on a rectangular piece of metal could dampen that take. (Still not sure what it was. The stirrup maybe?) Granted, it is the most embarrassing horseback riding accident in the history of mankind. (Apologies to the Australians and New Zealanders who find the term ‘horseback riding’ incredibly stupid. “Horseback? You don’t say? What other part of the horse are you intending to ride?” They have a point.) My thigh is now black, blue, purple, pink, and yellow and causes me to limp and flinch regularly. But that Valentine’s Day carousel ride was worth it. Worth the bum leg and the 2.50 euros.

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