Author Archives: edwinandlisa

Italy by Rail and Ship: Airing Dirty Laundry

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Dispatch from Riomaggiore, Cinque Terre, Italy.

It is past 10 p.m. at night and I am sitting here on the town’s main road, waiting for our laundry to finish its wash cycle.  So this post isn’t necessarily about airing out dirty laundry like any secrets or anything, it is really just about laundry!

We planned our trip to have about one week of clothing to wear and then doing laundry every week. We have been fortunate to have our own washing machine at our Airbnb in Lake Como, and a week later we were able to have our laundry done for us when we were on the Celebrity cruise ship. That one was pricey at twenty bucks, but that was actually a special for being a member of their captains Club. The regular special was for $49 for other passengers, so we actually saved quite a bit. However, for the rest of our laundry we have had to seek out self service laundromats and found them in Rome and in Florence. And tonight is our final laundry night before coming back to the States next week.

The average cost is around 5 Euro for one load of wash that lasts about 30 minutes. It has been so hot that we have not needed to dry any of our clothes in the electric dryer, we just hang them up in our hotel room. The challenge though is finding enough things to hang the laundry on. I did bring a small clothes line but it has been difficult to find anchors to attach it to and string it across the room or doorway.

We combine all of our dirty laundry in a dirty laundry bag that has skull and crossbones on it, because it is definitely toxic. With the temperatures hitting triple digits in Fahrenheit here over the past week we have definitely been sweaty and stinky and grimy and nasty. It will definitely be nice to have clean clothes again, although after an hour of walking around they just get all dirty and sweaty again, but it also helps that we have some dry fit items that dry quickly because we knew that Italy would be pretty hot.

At any rate, yes this is my post for the evening, all about laundry. It is a necessary chore that is important and must be done every week and we are just lucky that we have been able to find laundromats pretty close to our hotels and have been able to have clean clothes every week for the duration of our trip. If worst came to worst, I suppose we could always have just washed our clothes in the sink, but that is such a long process and having a washing machine do it all at once in half an hour is just an amazing technological miracle! Oh how I love the 21st century!

Italy by Rail and Ship: Lucca Meanderings

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Day trip to the walled town of Lucca, one of the best preserved city walls in the world.  It encircles the town 4km around, and the best part is that you can walk on top of it on wide paved walkways that are suitable for bicycling, roller skating and even horse carriage rides!  With plenty of trees to provide shade and many benches to rest, it is a very popular place for tourists and locals alike at all times of the day.  Walking the wall is not the only attraction, as the town also boasts some 100 churches, a bell tower that features trees at the top and of course lots of pedestrian-only passages that lead to numerous dining spots to eat, drink, hang out and people watch.  We really enjoyed all the green space that this town offered after so many days in the urban concrete jungles of Rome and Firenze.

 

Italy by Rail and Ship: An Accidental Flooding

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Long day enjoying the countryside of Tuscany and visiting three beautiful towns — Siena, San Gimignano and Pisa.  Our guide stated that this has been the hottest week of weather in the last fifty years, so after melting in 41 degree heat all day long, we were looking forward to our hotel in Pisa and taking showers to freshen up and get rid of that sweaty, sticky feeling.  We are staying at a hotel near the train station, Hotel La Pace.  It’s a little worn and it appears to have been a grand hotel back in the day.  TripAdvisor reviews are positive and it has what we need — location, WiFi, breakfast in the morning and a reasonable rate.  What it doesn’t have, however, is a fully enclosed and watertight shower area.

It is a standard bath tub, one that you would find in any American home.  But instead of a fixed shower head, it has one of those hand held adjustable shower heads, propped up in the corner of the tub.  And instead of a shower curtain, it has a half glass enclosure that has hinges and can swing in and out.  Unfortunately in order for it to swing, there is no adhesion between the top of the tub and the wall.  So no caulking, just a gap for water to find its way through.  And unfortunately, Lisa thought she was doing the right thing by pointing the shower head from the corner to the other corner towards the glass enclosure, so that the spray wouldn’t jump out of the exposed part of the shower/tub.  Smart move, but in the this situation, it backfired because the half the spray went down the drain and the other half just went underneath and to the side of the swinging glass door, and onto the floor.

When her shower was finished, I heard Lisa yell a “Oh No.”  I got up from the desk and walked over to the bathroom … only to find a lot of water had seeped from the bathroom door and into our room hallway between the door and sleeping area.  I attempted to fjord the waters in the bathroom to fetch the rest of the towels and to start mopping up, but there was just too much water in the bathroom.  That meant I needed to get more towels.  And so I started towards the door to go down to reception, but when I opened it… water had infiltrated into the hotel hallway and down towards the elevator and stairs!!  Okay, this was much more serious than I thought.  I raced down to reception, informed the front desk (after waiting a couple minutes for him to finish serving other guests) and he said that he’d send someone up with more towels.  Back up to the room I went, waiting outside in the hallway for the towels.  While waiting, the door opposite ours in the hallway opened up and a lady came out wondering what the hell was going on — water was all over the floor in her room as well!  I explained as best I could what happened — she was not very forgiving — and she headed downstairs to tell reception to double their time for the towels and she needed a drink from all of this.

A short while later, I heard footsteps coming up and another lady appeared and I warned her to be careful about the water.  Her eyes got big and she immediately got on her cellphone, calling the owner and for additional assistance.  The hotel maintenance guy followed thereafter, with towels, bed sheets, shower mats and whatever else they could come up with to soak up all the water.  Thirty minutes after the discovery of the escaped water, our ordeal was over.  A mop bucket and more towels appeared and the lady in room 223 was taken care of.  We received new towels and an extra few to finish drying off the floors.  Lisa felt pretty bad about the situation and all that it caused.  Some good lessons have come from this:

  • Don’t put your clothes on the floor when showering (they were completely soaked)
  • Always check to see where the spray is going
  • Have Edwin check in every few minutes to ensure proper containment of all bath water inside the shower area and spring into immediate superhero action if any water escapes to the bathroom floor
  • Take a deep breath and remember that this will make for quite the memory and story long after this trip is over.

For now, this particular tale is done.  Or so I think.  For it is now time for me to take my shower…

Italy by Rail and Ship: Bologna Meanderings

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We took a day trip from Florence to Bologna, which is considered by many to be the culinary capital of Italy.  We rode the “slow” train because it was slightly cheaper, leaving at 8:30am and arriving just before 10:00am.  With some suggestions from an old friend, some guidance from my Lonely Planet Italy book, and advice from a few internet sites, we made the most of our day.  Well, we tried.  It hit a high of 41 C, which converts to 105 degrees.  Yikes!  So we went pretty slowly all day long.  What was interesting is that we didn’t find any public fountains at all in Bologna, so we actually had to buy some bottled water!  Fortunately the town is known for their porticoes — basically, these are covered sidewalks.  Which meant that we were mostly in the shade and it helped some with the heat, but we were dragging and felt bogged down with the heat and the fatigue.  We spent the day walking around the historic center and visited a lot of different churches — at least ten by my count, including the fifth largest church in the world (well, by their literature anyways — it is in the top ten).  We also had the opportunity to eat handmade tortellini and their famous tagliolini al ragù, which is a hearty meat sauce over noodles.  We rode the bullet train on the return, with a journey of just about half an hour and we finished off our day with a visit to one of the highly rated gelaterias in Florence – Gelateria La Carraia.  After our hot and thirsty day we choose  the three scoop combination of Mixed Berry, Limone and Melon.  Delish!

 

Italy by Rail and Ship: Florence Cooking Class

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We spent the day learning how to cook a four-course authentic Italian meal, highly recommended!

We started by shopping at the local markets for fresh tomatoes and basil; the bakery for our bread; the cheese monger for Parmesan Reggiano cheese; and the meat market for pork loin and freshly ground beef.  We headed up to the estate in a bus and emptied out into a beautiful kitchen where we all did some hands on learning the fine art of making bruschetta, pizza, fresh pasta and tiramisu.  We ate, drank wine and socialized throughout, culminating in our very large supper and dessert.