Tuesday evening- Listening to the echoes of the empty nest

Well, the youngest of five children caught a taxi from our hotel in downtown Florence and rode up to campus this afternoon. She is officially a college student. We picked her up yesterday in Milan (cheaper to fly there and take the train than to fly directly into Florence by a wide margin) and traveled with her to Florence. We wandered around the city today in search of a few last minute things she needed for the dorm (can you really call living in a villa a dorm?) like towels and shampoo. We had lunch together (we are all serious aficionados of Italian food after only a few meals). We had gelato also, on the advice of sister-in-law Maryann who advises that a complete diet requires calcium to go with the antioxidants in the dark chocolate. All in all, we had a great twenty-four hours with Caitie before she kissed us goodbye and went off to college.

Florence is such a cool city. We spent our first night here with Caitie in a dump. We have been staying in budget hotels and some are fine and some are borderline. This one was fine once you were in the room, but it really was a set of studio apartments on the third floor of an office building and the common areas smelled badly of mold. It’s saving grace was free internet which gave me the ability to surf around until I found something better for our subsequent nights. So, this morning the three of us traipsed two blocks to a better budget hotel which is considerably better , doesn’t smell and also has free internet. They have a prohibition against food or drink in your room and don’t allow doing your laundry in your room, so we will have to be a bit sneakier than we have been in the past.

We haven't really done any of the sightseeing stuff yet, unless you call walking by the duomo, an icon of Italy, the 11th century church that is probably one of the top ten churches in the world, in search of a department store that has towels, seeing the sights. Then, walking by it again in search of a computer store that might have a computer recharger to replace the one Caitie left in Spain. Or, maybe the third pass by when we were walking off our meal and making room for the gelato they sell in that beautiful marble palace of an ice cream store across from the site of a Roman forum, the Piazza Della Republicca. Or maybe you could call it sightseeing when we were walking up and down the rows of the open air market looking for new flip flops (Caitie and me), a new skirt (Caitie) and a new patch (guess who that was for?)

The open air market was lots of fun. Walking with Caitie made it all the more so. She was frequently the star of the show, as the good looking Italian men called out, "Ciao, Bella" when she walked by. She played it very cool, though, just smiling and maintaining her pace. Doesn't mean I'm not worrying though. Caitie warned Mike not to wander off in search of anything though... even Mom got a marriage proposal from a waiter at an outdoor cafe who asked me where I was from, and upon hearing Seattle, told me he was Kenny G and we ought to get married. A bald, black Kenny G would be a surprise take away from Florence.

So, after spending our entire married life with kids, we suddenly find ourselves far from home with no kids needing us for day-to-day management. It will take a little getting used to. We'll have five more weeks in Italy, with lots of Italian wine, great food and gelato to try and work through it, though. We'll let you know how we do.

Tomorrow we hit the trail for real sight-seeing so we will give you a report of what we see. At 4:00 PM we meet at Caitie's campus for a parent tour of campus and a welcome reception. We spent full days each at the same event for the boys and had memorable lessons such as, "don't expect them to graduate in four years (helpful in setting expectations for what has inevitably happened)", "keep your paycheck handy" and "they will change majors half a dozen times before they graduate (true enough if you average across the boys). NYU Florence, which costs way more than the state universities the boys are attending may have an entirely different twist on things. We will let you know tomorrow.

It is 6:45 and we hear the dinner bells chiming. We are off to dinner. Ciao!
Deanne