Life in Eye-Tye

I arrived in Italy on Friday, at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport, and immediately took off in a rented car north to the Chianti country. That’s where I’ve been since then, checking out the local vineyards during the late morning and early afternoon, lounging around the pool until the early evening, having two-and-a-half-hour dinners and then sharing bottles of Chianti Classico under the stars.

Today we drove into Florence (Firenze), which is where I am at the moment, in an Internet spot just a block or so from the Duomo. It’s hot here, enough to make August in Spokane feel like a dip in Lake Coeur d’Alene. So spending an hour or two in an air-conditioned Internet business doesn’t seem like too much of a waste of time.

I mean, ordinarily I would be on the prowl for art, which isn’t particularly hard to find in this city. The David, the Duomo, the Brancacci Chapel, the Ponte Vecchio, the Uffizi, the Boboli Gardens, Dante’s House. And that’s just the short list.

Tonight, though, we figure on going to a movie (surprise-surprise). Monday is the night that English-languages movies play, so we don’t want to miss the opportunity. After that we’ve got opera tickets. If I’m going to nap, it’ll likely be then.

Whatever, this is the first of my reports from Italy. There will be more. I’ll drop in whenever I can. Most likely when the heat gets to high to bear.