Thursday evening, May 13

When we returned from our last dinner in Firenze, the desk host, Pamela, asked whether I had seen the message she had written and placed on the pillow in my room. I had not. She said that a man had called and wanted me to call home. Odd . . . I have a phone with me all the time, and I had sent the number to Neil, my sisters and my children, in case they needed or wanted to talk with me while I’m here.

I went into my room and called Neil. He said, “I have some very bad news for you. Are you sitting?” My heart sank. My mother, I thought. The most logical death, one I’ve been dreading and anticipating for years. I spoke my thought and Neil said, “No, not your mother. It’s Marcia. She died sometime in her sleep Tuesday night.”

I am stunned. Marcia . . . my friend of 35 years, my beloved “sister”. Marcia who eight years ago, while I was on this very trip, in this exact same spot, on the same day of the trip, underwent a kidney transplant which continued to function perfectly all these years. Marcia, who was hosting book group Wednesday night, one which Cyndy and I would miss since we’d be over here, thinking about the rest of our women discussing The Help.

The women began to gather and no one came to Marcia’s door. It was clear, peeking through the windows, that nothing had been prepared for hosting this event, but for five bottles of wine chilling on the back porch. One friend called the police, they all huddled in the cold and fear, shivering against the possibilities, until the worst was confirmed.

Since this is meant to be my travel blog, with delightful tales daily, I won’t venture into all the details here, but will put more thoughts in my “Checking-In” page on my website, http://www.lifeprintsjournal.com Suffice it to say that we are all shocked. And that I will not be there for the memorial service. And that I will light a candle in every church I enter here in my bella Italia as I have always done for my mother, and now for Marcia.

I walked down the hall of the Hotel Pendini to Cyndy’s room and told her the news. We sat on the beds and tried to get our brains around this unexpected death. Finally I went back to my room, packing for the morning’s departure, grabbing perhaps two or three hours of sleep in the early morning.

Friday morning we all met in the dining room of the Pendini for breakfast, did the ritual check-out at the desk, Lando took our bags down to the street while Pamela called our taxi. On to the rental car place, where there was an hour’s worth of difficulties (surprise surprise), and then we were on our way to Siena, our next stop. That trip, thankfully, was uneventful. We dropped our bags at the Palazzo di Valli, bought shuttle tickets for the old city (a ten-minute shuttle drive), waited at the shuttle stop, disembarked at the Piazza de Mercato and walked to Il Campo, where we met my guide and friend, Viviana, for our three hour private walking tour around Old Siena. A candle now stands in the tray at the Duomo, lit brightly for Marcia.

After our tour, we found a table on the Campo to sit, have a drink of coffee, hot chocolate, spremuta (fresh squeezed) of orange juice, etc. We taught the waiter a new word . . . “grapefruit” and he taught us one . . . “pompelmo”. Grapefruit. I watched his face while he tried to picture “grape” and “fruit”, but we explained that a grapefruit is like a very large orange, but not sweet. He understood. Pompelmo. Grapefruit.

A walk back to the shuttle piazza and then to the hotel, a quick change of clothes, checking e-mail for more news about Marcia, and we headed out again, shuttle shuttle shuttle, walk walk walk to Antica Osteria da Divo, the restaurant built into a cave, where we had a predictably fabulously tasty meal. Canneloni stuffed with vegetables and melted pecorino cheese, a variety of bruschette topped with oil, tomatoes, and pate, a leek and potato tart atop a creamed broccoli sauce, with scallops over the whole thing. And that was just the first part of the meal. Sea bass, a “wreath of sole” with minced vegetables, rolled pork with a delicious filling, followed by more desserts. My, my. Though this group is not a wine-drinking one, Paula and I did have a half bottle of Chianti Reserva Mona Lisa, and we all toasted to Marcia at the beginning and the end of the meal. A taxi back to the hotel was in order, rather than the schlep to the shuttle.

It is raining, and that’s been a part of each of our days in Italy so far, the wettest I have ever experienced. But we do have umbrellas and at least they’re being put to use. Before I put my exhausted body down on the bed for the night, perhaps to get a better stretch of sleep, I called Ryan, Marcia’s son, and talked with him for quite awhile. I met Marcia just as she learned she was pregnant with Ryan, so I have literally known him all his life. When he was little, he called my daughter “Ashala” instead of Ashley. I will try to be a second mom to him and his sister Lara, because Marcia IS like my sister, and the kids have known one another forever. I felt better having talked with him.

Saturday morning, May 15

I am in the sitting room at Palazzo di Valli, writing this before we head out to our villa later today. I doubt very much whether the villa has internet, and I’m not sure I want to carry my computer into each town we visit, hoping I can use it. But I will check e-mail and post to this blog from the many internet cafes we will encounter along the way, and keep a good record of our group adventures. From the villa, one of the many named Podere Camere in this country, we will do day trips to Chianti, to Montepulciano and Pienza, to Cortona and Lake Trasiemeno, to Porto San Stefano and the Tarot Gardens in Capalbio, to San Gimignano, and perhaps explore a bit of Montalcino, only 12 km from the villa.

It will be a diverse week but we won’t have to pack up our suitcases every day or two, and that is always a relief. More later . . .

Friday, 11:45 p.m.

I can’t believe our first week in Italy is nearly completed, but we have been very busy, so I’ll shorten up all the details. The women on this trip are a great fit . . . kind, adventurous, ready to eat anything and to consider one another in every decision. Grown ups! That’s what I love!

On Wednesday, we visited the Accademia to see the magnificent David. I never get tired of just sitting and looking at him, walking down the long hall with Michelangelo’s Prigioni (The Prisoners) lining each side of the entrance to The David itself. Next we headed to the Medici Chapel and studied the restoration of the mosaics there. A lunch at Il Porcospino and then another walk to the CLIC school for our second language lesson with Leonardo! Are we fluent yet?

Dinner at Il Latine meant sitting at a table constantly being replenished with piles of food . . . bruschetta of all sorts, potatoes, spinach, a platter of beef, veal, rabbit, chicken, pork and a slice of lamb, lots of good bread, a basket/bottle of Chianti, and of course dolci . . . a mixed plate of delicious desserts. Several bottles of water, some cantucci (biscotti) and vin santo for dipping, and a tasty moscato to finish everything off . . . much too much for us. So we bagged up the leftovers and deposited them with a beggar and two dogs a half-block from our hotel. I hope they all went to bed with full tummies.

On Thursday, we were up again and out by 9:00 in order to get to the Uffizi Galleria at our reserved time, 9:30. So much art, so little time . . . actually, I think I’ve seen enough at the Uffizi by now, but there is always an interesting exhibit beginning JUST after we leave town! We grabbed a casual lunch at an outdoor cafe behind the museum before going our separate ways. Cyndy and Jan decided they would spend the rest of the afternoon at the Pitti Palace and the Boboli Gardens. Paula was exhausted and wanted to go back to the hotel to rest. I decided to see how many old haunts I could find without using my Streetwise Florence map. With my trusty pedometer on my right hip, I set out past the Duomo and a bit to the right (that’s the kind of directions one gets here anyway!).

Ah, there’s the restaurant one of our groups went to a few years ago . . . and there’s the internet cafe I visited regularly over the last few years (though there are many many more these days, and our hotels now have wireless in the rooms . . . both a blessing and a curse). And THIS alleyway looks familiar, and this . . . in a surprisingly short time, I could see the facade of Santa Croce through the opening down a street to my left. Another two curving blocks and there is was, at the end of a favorite piazza, and for the first time in twelve years of visiting Florence, the church at Santa Croce was without scaffolding across the front of it. The restoration of the outside is completed, and the facade is beautiful! (I have a photo, but I’ll have to load it when I get home . . . technical difficulties.

I found one of the benches with enough room to give me space from the other “sitters”, and sat down, opened my umbrella, dug my book, The History Of Love, out of my bag, and read for an hour or so. A young man was playing a guitar on the square across from me, the carabinieri (one level of Italian police) were checking his permit to see if some official in Florence had allowed him to sing, pidgeons scuttered across the old stone blocks of the piazza, and the visitors moved to and fron in front of me, behind me, all around me.

An old woman with a fisherman’s hat on her head sat on her walker seat and screamed over and over again, something about her “chapeau”, while a frantic younger woman tried to quiet her. Another car full of carabinieri sat on the sidelines, the uniformed men and one uniformed woman getting out of the car, ready to see what the old woman was yellling about, but of course, they didn’t do anything . . . they are fairly ineffectual much of the time, or at least that’s been my experience. Sorry, carabinieri . . .

After my Santa Croce time, I wandered back toward the direction of my hotel, down a different street . . . I sighed. A straight shot from a slightly different direction would have brought me to this place in much less time, but without the adventore or the sense of accomplishment.

Back at the hotel, I knocked on Paula’s door and we went back out to the streets to see if the button shop was now open after the afternoon closure, quite typical in Italy. Samba was indeed open and I bought Euro 40 worth of beautiful buttons to add to the ones I’ve gotten here every visit. ONE OF THESE DAYS, I’ll make those fabric bags that I’m always planning in my head, and use the buttons to close the flaps on the purses. But not today. Today is Paula’s birthday, and we hunted for gelato for her. I found a Ben and Jerry’s and got regular, harder ice cream, then met with Cyndy and Jan after their Giardini Boboli, Giardini Barbino, and Pitti Palace experience.

Before dinner, we finished off the exploration sequence with a walk to Ferragammo’s side entrance, where down in the lower stone level is a shoe museum. The exhibit that had just opened honors Ferragammo’s longstanding relaetionship as the shoe designer and craftsman for Greta Garbo. A documentary video, three rooms full of Garbo’s dresses, and displays everywhere of the shoes she purchased from this old building in the last century fulfilled our haute couture desires for today and we departed hungry and looking for a nice sidewalk cafe.

It was a very long, diverse, fulfilling day, and we were all ready for bed. But it was not to be, at least not for me . . . another story for the next post. Now I have to get ready to check out of the Siena Palazzo di Valli . . . but I get ahead of myself.

Next time.