Whew! We made it to the beautiful city of Florence, Italy. It was quite a trek yesterday from the hotel to the train station, but the necessity created by the waterbus strike allowed us opportunity to visit the fish market and parts of the city we had not seen. We joined lots of others lugging baggage across the city and were so glad to be shouldering packpacks and not dragging suitcases up and over the canal bridges. There were water taxis available at an absurd price, and even the gondoliers were transporting groups of tourists standing up in the tippy boats, for an extravagant fee, so we were quite happy to walk.The train ride to Florence took about two hours with several stops. We have been warned repeatedly about pickpockets and other thieves in Italy, especially on the trains. Until yesterday we had not seen anything fishy (and we keep our passport, credit cards, cash, etc. in a money belt beneath our clothes.) While waiting to leave the station in Venice, however, we became aware of a well-dressed gentleman in his thirties who appeared to be a businessman. At first, it looked like he was going to sit in a seat next to Leroy. Then he moved down a row and chatted amiably with a couple in another row as he continued to stand in the aisle. Periodically he would reach up into the luggage compartment above the seats and adjust items there, presumably his own. I noticed that he looked nervous and was sweating profusely. Finally, he removed a laptop case from the luggage compartment and placed it under his arm. A woman across the aisle from us pointed her finger at him and spoke sternly, telling him to put it back. I thought it must be her husband and she was mad at him, but the man quickly put the case back and almost instantly disembarked. It was a train thief!
Soon after leaving the station, a teenaged girl walked through the coach placing small yellow pieces of paper on each tray between the facing seats. A nearby rider who knows a small amount of Italian said the paper described the sad situation of a young mother who could not feed her children. Moments later, a woman walked through the coach with her hand out to receive donations of money. We have encountered beggars many times each day in Italy and did not feel inclined to contribute to this one, but she stopped at my seat and pointed to my yet-uneaten lunch while rubbing her stomach and looking sad. I gave her Leroy's muffin. Within a few minutes, the train stopped and we saw the two young women running down the platform, escaping the train before being caught without tickets. We learned later that this is a common scam in Italy, along with the "clipboard scam" and the "gold ring scam" (various methods of engaging tourists and taking their money.) While in Venice, Leroy gave some coins to an elderly, cloaked woman with a covered head outside St. Mark's Church who was moaning and holding a donation cup with a shaking hand. I thought the hand looked suspiciously young and we discovered later that many of the "old women" are young boys. Begging in Italian cities is often tied to organized crime, with those who beg serving as virtual slaves and receiving a tiny percentage of the take. Unfortunately, those who are really in need are not helped in this way, and the scams turn people off to acknowledging and addressing the poverty that does exist in Italy and other European countries.
From the train station in Florence, we walked a half mile or so to the apartment that will be our home for three days. It is just a few blocks from the Duomo (Florence's domed cathedral) in one dirction and about two blocks from the Uffizi art gallery in the other. There are seventy-six steps leading up five flights from the street to our apartment on the top floor of a narrow fourteenth century stone tower that is squeezed between two other buildings, one of which was the boyhood home of Michelangelo! Yesterday afternoon we went out to find a grocery store and got distracted by the beautiful statues and churches and bridges that are all around us. We finally made it back to the apartment in time to do laundry before heading out for spaghetti. Across the street is a gelateria considered by many to have the best gelato in Italy. When the queen of England has a hankering for gelato, it is the Vivoli gelataria that packs it in ice and ships it to her. I chose orange chocolate, peach, and lemon, and savored every spoonful.I am reading Dan Brown's new book, The Inferno, which I downloaded on the iPad. It is set in Florence and in Venice, so the timing is perfect for our visit here!
