Contentment is wandering the streets of Florence with your daughter

We have spent yesterday and today enjoying our reunion with Caitie and with the city of Florence. When we arrived on Saturday evening after planes, trains and automobiles from Barcelona we were greeted at the hotel like family returning home. This is our third visit to this hotel, and each time we have stayed for a week or two so we know the staff and feel comfortable here. If any of you visit Florence we recommend the City Hotel, a reasonably priced hotel a few short blocks walking distance from the train station in one direction and the famous Duomo in the other. In exchange for the reasonable price and central location we put up with street noise and rules about not bringing food or drink into our room.

Caitie has moved in with us for a few days so that we can all see as much of each other as possible. We have a cozy room on the first floor (which of course means up a flight of stairs from the lobby which is on the ground floor) with both a queen and twin bed so that we can all stretch out. The bathroom looks like an afterthought. It is so narrow that you can literally stand in the center of the room and touch each of the side walls with your bent elbows. As you walk into this narrow room you first encounter the sink which is immediately followed by the toilet then the bidet and the back wall. The shower head is high up on the wall above the bidet. You stand beside the bidet to shower, pulling the shower curtain closed to keep the water from spraying the rest of the room. There is no shower floor, nor anything to mark the area as a shower except the shower head and the curtain the divides the room into two halves: that half that you stand in to shower and the other half that stays dry when the curtain is closed.

Caitie left us this morning at 8:30 to attend a class after staying up until 3:00 AM working on a paper due on Tuesday. She walked the two miles back into town from campus, returning at 12:30 so that we could all have lunch together. After lunch we set off to walk around the city on what was the most beautiful day we have ever been in Florence. We walked around downtown, across the Arno river and up into the hills where the wealthy live and where the homes of luminaries such as Michelangelo and DaVinci are located. There is a beautiful church up above the Piazza Michelangelo where we took photos looking across the city to her campus on the other side. The weather was spectacular and I will remember forever the beauty of that sight. It was great to have time to catch up with Caitie and hear all about her year away.

Mike and I served as editors and coaches as she worked on an essay due tomorrow. It was fun to be called into service to give her advice about the wording on this paper that describes one aspect of her experience while here in Florence. Not only were we impressed once again with the quality of her writing and her insights, but we had deja vu moments of when the three of us worked on reviewing her papers in high school.

Dinner tonight was in a smaller neighborhood trattoria. Many of the restaurants have fixed price menus in which you get a first course of soup or pasta, a second course of meat and a desert, complete with a bottle of water and a glass of wine. We had set off to eat at a familiar restaurant that offered such a dinner and ended up trying one around the corner from the hotel with that same type menu. Caitie and I had wonderful minestrone soup while Mike had spaghetti, then all three of us had grilled chicken breasts and a crème caramel that looked better than it tasted. We had a great time.

We are sitting on our respective beds now, Mike reading a novel, Caitie and I yping away at our computers. I think we are all very content and happy to be together. We are looking forward to our summer together in Seattle in just a few weeks.

Tomorrow Caitie heads back up to campus in the morning for class while Mike and I head over to the neighborhood Laventeria (Laundromat) for an overdue appointment. We are taking a bus up to campus to meet Caitie and four friends for lunch. It seems hard to believe that we will be leaving her to return to Spain on Wednesday morning.

Do you like the new photos?

So long,
Deanne