On to Tuscany....er...the ER?

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Monday morning: Uh oh…you know how I mentioned that I was sick? Well my throat had gotten worse, it seemed, overnight, plus my right eye was welded shut!! When I finally took a shower and pried my eye open, it was super red! I thought I might have pink eye! (Never had it before). Well I had read somewhere that if you go to the hospital in Italy, they would treat you for free, even if you are from another country. So, it was about 7:00 in the morning, and after hemming and hawing for about 20 minutes, and knowing we had to check out by 11:00, I decided we needed to take a taxi to the nearest E.R. What an adventure! So, we arrived at this huge, huge facility, and went right in to the ER. I, armed with my French, German, Italian language book got across to the triage nurse that my throat, my ears, and my eye needed to be checked for an “infeczione”. She promptly advised me that I needed to go over to the ear, nose and throat clinic, which opened at 9:00. She wrote my name on a piece of paper and gave me directions how to get there, in Italian of course! So Kenya and I went there (it was by now 7:30), so we had a wait on our hands! Luckily we both brought books! LOL Around 8:30, more and more people started arriving, and I was getting a little nervous that we were not sitting in the right spot in order to be seen first. So, we asked a nurse who was scurrying by where the “otolinga clinica” was, and she showed us a door in the hallway that we had to sit outside of on a little bench…well there were three other people sitting on the bench already, so we had to stand. Every once in a while, a little tiny nurse popped her head out of the door and looked around. Finally, at ten to nine, I asked her if there was some sort of system of how they saw patients. Of course, she did not speak a word of English! But no worries! I had my dictionary!!! So she took my note from the ER, and my passport and left down the hallway. About 10 minutes she came back and told this man, who was trying to help me out too, that I needed to go down to the cashiers’ office and pay for my visit. So off we went, waaaaay to the other side of the campus, where we found the cashiers’ office filled to capacity! I took my number, 184, (they were on 161 when we arrived), and sat and waited. Luckily for us, the cashier’s were very efficient, and we heard our number called before too long. I was a little nervous, because I had no idea how much this little visit was going to cost! Well, much to my surprise, the whole thing cost Є21,11!! I was surprised! So, back to the clinic we went…went the nurse popped her head back out, I gave her my receipt and she gave me a number. Within 10 minutes we were in! Wahoo! Now, I really did not know what to expect, since we were all sitting outside in the hallway, but I was escorted into this itty bitty little cubicle, with a student nurse…doctor? And he hand wrote my ailments into this large journal along with my name and the date. There was no door on the cubicle and I could hear everything that was happening in several other cubicles, even though it all was in Italian…so much for HIPAA and privacy…huh? LOL!! So the doctor came in with a mask on already, talking on his cell phone (quite heatedly, I might add), and asked his student what was going on with me (I think I was the talk of the clinic because #1, I was American and spoke little Italian, #2, I had absolutely no voice, and # 3, I had Kenya with me.) So he looked into my ears and had his student look as well, and he harrumph’d, then he looked into my throat and harrumph’d again…I kept asking “infeczione?”, infeczione…?” and he shook his head no and said I probably had the flu. I was so relieved! I can deal with the flu, but knew I would need some pretty heavy duty drugs to get a massive infection out! I asked that even though he was not an eye doctor, could he tell me if I have pink eye? He said it was all part of the flu…mind you, this was all in Italian! Again, I was so relieved. By then, it was 10:45, so Kenya and I walked outside and looked for a taxi…our ride was not that far that morning, and we saw the route when our concierge showed us on the map that morning, so we decided to walk back. We arrived just at 11:00, so we packed a few more things and were done. Since I was under the weather, and we had truly seen everything we wanted to see, Kenya and I just decided to stay at the hotel, in the lounge, until our train to Florence left that afternoon. We knew we needed to catch up on our blogs/journals, and write postcards, so we felt good about our decision!



Monday afternoon: We left our hotel at approx. 1:15 to catch our 2:45 train…we needed to get lunch, and we had been spying a gourmet gelato shop that we definitely wanted to try. So we went to the massive Roma Termini (train station) and found ourselves where? At the local McDonald’s!! Kenya knew her Oma would be mad if we went to McDonald’s, but she justified it by saying that she just wanted a comparison…lol. My Big Mac and fries tasted just the same as home, as did her cheeseburger and fries! Then we went to the gelato shoppe and they served their desserts to go in a lovely glass bowl!! I was surprised that they didn’t want them back! I had tiramisu and Kenya had ciccolato…yum!!! Kenya and I had reserved and bought our train tickets to Florence a few days earlier, so when we went to look at the huge board to see which “binario”, or platform we needed, I saw the number and right time of our train, but it said it was going to Venezia (Venice)! I found out that the train made a couple of stops before Venice, and ours was one of them!!! Phew! So off to Florence and Santa Maria Novella Stazione!



We took a bullet train from Rome to Florence…the trip lasted about an hour and fifteen minutes. Train rides here, feel like roller coaster rides, because when we went around a curve, the train tilted like a roller coaster does…was pretty neat on a high speed train! Over all, the ride was uneventful, and we went through a ton of long tunnels! So I read and slept, and Kenya read and played with her DS player. There was a poor little toddler who got train sick and threw up a few times, about five rows away from us…poor thing just cried, and coughed the whole way after that! Luckily he/she was far enough away that we did not experience any smells and such! Once we got into Florence, we had to take a local train to the town where we rented our farmhouse villa. The town was called Lastra a Signa, and it was about 12 minutes by train, from Florence. Once we arrived, our directions said we could call a taxi, or just walk to the villa. We tried calling the taxi service, but were just put on hold for a long time, so we hung up and started walking. Now…if we had known where we were going, the route would have taken about 10 minutes. Forty five minutes later, Kenya and I were still lugging all of our gear around the tiny alleys and even tinier sidewalks completely lost! Of course!! Turns out, the green gate I was looking for was wrought iron, and not wooden (don’t know where I got that into my head!) Finally, a little old man (probably 85 years old), who was out walking, pointed us to where we needed to be (apparently, the owners of the estate where we were renting, are the only owners in the area who rent out the several villas on their 100 hectare estate). He said “Brogi”? And we said “yes”!! Mario and Toscana Brogi are the owners’ names. Turned out, we were only a block away. So we found the gates, and looked up the long cypress tree lined drive, and found that Signore Brogi was on his way down the hill to find us (we were supposed to arrive at 4:00ish, and by now it was 6:00!) So he packed our bags into the back of his truck and took us up the looong drive to our villa!



Wow…our first look at the villa we rented for a week…in the heart of Tuscany!! It is a two bedroom, two bath farmhouse, with green wooden French doors that both open on to the stone paved patio. The front entry led right into the dining room/kitchen area, which had a marble sink, a gas oven/stove, and a full size refrigerator. It had a darling round table in the dining room with a beautiful lace table cloth from Burano. The hutch held our dishware and silverware. And there was a tiny, little dishwasher too! There was a side door in the kitchen that led to a huge undercover “loggia” or patio with a BBQ grill and a large table and chair set…the table was a beautiful mosaic piece that probably weighed 200+ pounds!! The legs were made out of wrought iron. Both I and my parents wished we could ship one home! There were wooden stairs leading from the dining room area to the two bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs. The whole house had brick tile flooring and brick walls as well…kept very cool inside!! The bedroom that Kenya and I chose came first…it had two beds in it, and they were super comfy! The bedspreads were beautiful embroidered quilts, which looked like they were antique. The hutch was absolutely an amazing piece of art…it was definitely an antique as well…painted with a fresco on it. There were little lavender sachets everywhere, so it always smelled fresh and yummy! We had a lovely view of the pool from upstairs too. We loved the bathroom! It has a large shower in it that had those amazing rain shower heads! The toilets here in Italy are kind of funny…they have two buttons to flush, one big button and one little button…which personally, I think corresponds to the type of waste you deposited, if you know what I mean…lol. In this bathroom, they had a little machine behind the toilet that made a noise like it was grinding up all your waste then sending it on…pretty funny! Anyway, the room we saved for when my mom and dad would arrive from Germany was the same, except that there was just one queen size bed, instead of two twins.



So the property we were staying on had lots and lots of olive trees…the leaves are a silvery green, and they produce a huge crop of olives in October. They stocked our villa with several bottles of the estate’s olive oil and also several bottles of red and white wine, which they also produce. I cannot believe the difference in the taste of the olive oil from ours in the States to the fresh ones produced here, in Italy! Wow!! There are also two resident horses, one black and one brown…we never did get their names.



That evening, Kenya and I settled in and walked down to the local grocery store (about ½ mile away). We got some fresh baked Tuscan bread, some salami, prosciutto, cheese, butter, Nutella, milk and water. We got to meet some of the locals, and they were all so nice…the love kids here!!! Especially ones who endeavor to speak their language. J We walked back to the villa ate our dinner, went for a swim, and went to bed…we had an exciting cooking day planned the next two days!

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