Florence & Rome, from May

There is a reason why it has taken me six months to write about my experiences in Rome and Florence this past May. It is the reason my trip blog totally stalled, and I dropped it for a while. Finally, I am determined to move on. And the only way out is through. After the gorgeous stop in Capri, I was most looking forward to revisiting Rome and Florence, where I had had tours two years earlier. The tours were great! They were the best way to see these two rich cities in only a day. I was so looking forward to going again, and this time doing it on my own, not part of a tour. To get to Rome, my mom and I took a train. To Florence, I went by myself on a motor coach. It was surprisingly easy to navigate to the train station and back. The only problem was there was a lot of walking. (This was much less a problem for me than it was for my mother who uses a cane, and is not as mobile as she wishes to be). The first hard decision was to concede that we could not see as much of Rome as we liked. We didn't have time, and it was simply too big a city to do it all. So we limited ourselves to the Colosseum and the old Roman Forum. This was a place that neither my mother or I had been able to see much of in prior trips. I was happy with seeing these places, but unhappy that I had to be limited. Okay, I did really want to see the Colosseum - and I got to see all of it inside and out, with an english speaking tour guide, and it was awesome. The Forum was less interesting to me, and as the time dragged on became even a trial to be borne. It is just a pile of old columns and arches from thousands of years ago spread over several acres. Its hard to find signs or to know what you are seeing unless you are part of a tour. It was hot. It smelled bad (The Cloaca Maximus is there). My mom stopped part way through and was done for the day. We got ripped off by these assholes dressed as Roman Centurions outside who demanded twenty euros for the privilege of photos with them AFTER I asked them, "Quanto costa?" and they replied, "Niente." And the cab fare (because my mom refused the subway) was twenty euro each way, and the tour cost fifty euro for both of us. And lunch in a cafe was ten euro per entree. So this day was ending up at the $200 range in short order! I felt really guilty. Because I wished my mom could walk more so that we could have spent our money better, so that we could have seen so much more. It was so frustrating. And then I had a total panic attack on the train back to Civitavecchia (the port town) because none of the interim town names were the same, and I honestly thought we got on the wrong train and wouldn't make it back to the ship in time (and my daughter was on board!) When that thought went through my head, I swear my heart clutched so hard I thought I might have to thump myself on the chest to get it going again. But we ended up all right, and the only sequella was a nasty chest cold that I caught and later termed the Roman Flu, but I didn't know about it until I had just started walking in the rain in Florence...
So Florence started off real nice too. I had some advil, but no other medicine. I could feel myself come down with a fever and a tightening across my chest as the virus invaded. It was Sunday so there was no Farmacia open. I went to a gallery of gorgeous art collected by the Medici's and literally got dizzy in there and had to escape. I went to a cafe and ordered a half liter of wine and some pizza from this very cute Italian boy, and all of that made me feel much better. Fortified, I revisited all the places that I wanted to and marveled at the statues and art, the tombs and busts of the famous Florentines, the Duomo and the Santa Croce churches, and was the last one back (only two minutes late). Back on the ship, I crashed, rubbed my aching feet, developed a deep cough, and gave my cold to my daughter. At least I had a sea day to recover, and slept on the hardest bed ever in Barcelona. It was a trial, getting around first Barcelona, then Lisbon with all the suitcases and everything, but things started looking up in Lisbon.
It is such a disappointment when the time you thought would be the highlight turns out to be the nadir of the trip. However, having reached the depths, join me as we climb out of dispair and into the really fun part of the trip...