Wed 04.Oct.2017
En Route to California
I am still stranded in California, waiting to get moving on medical issues. So today we have
another flashback page - in fact, a story. The homeward journey from Rhodes to California last
Spring.
Starting out in Rhodes. The front porch of a friend and former neighbor. How Aegean-looking
can you get?
A straight trip from Rhodes to California would be a marathon of flights and airports. This time
I broke the journey in Italy, visiting Firenze and a friend who lives there.
How wrong can you go
with Italy?
A shout-out to the low-profile Hotel Rodo, comfy, friendly, superbly located off the Piazza del Duomo,
and - in February - only a moderate splurge on my budget.
Across the river, near the Pitti Palace.
When you have already gotten the big tourist attractions of Florence - and there are plenty -
out of your system,
you can relax and savor the ambience, the side streets, the plain old joy of being in Italy.
The key word is relax. Many first timers are ridden by the demon fear of missing some treasure
that they should be seeing, and end up missing the greatest Italian treasure of all.
An upscale caffe whose name I forget, on Piazza della Republica, near the northwest corner.
(You need only keep track of which way is North, South, etc - no small feat in Firenze!)
Why does Italy draw a disproportionate number of those buskers who dress up as waxworks
dummies, and stand motionless hoping for coins? A beastly uncomfortable living - to say nothing of
mind-numbingly boring. They have my sympathy, but jeez ...
Up river from the center, I think near the Ponte San Nicolo
You don't fly direct to San Francisco from Italy. You do from Paris though, so why not cadge
a night in Everybody's *other* Favorite City on the way?
Cafe Sitting with un café on Place Denfert-Rochereau.
A butcher shop on pedestrianized Rue Daguerre.
A welcome sight after almost twelve hours in the air! If you know what to look for, you can see
the runways at SFO sticking into the bay, upper center.
Just because we are back in the 'burbs doesn't mean we are completely free from civic weirdness.
This big baby head in Walnut Creek could compare with the
Žižkov Tower babies
in Prague, if it were on the world's
Second Ugliest Building.
A visit from Mother Goose! She stayed a good month or more, and eventually produced at least one
goose baby.
Her footloose kin folk wander around a nearby golf course that I sometimes use for exercise
walks.