Waking at about 9am I once again went for breakfast in the restaurant, although at a more leisurely pace than the previous day. Once finished I went back to my room to pack and discovered that I had lost my camera. Being small I had tucked it into my handbag and having checked with the hotel that they didn’t have it, I realized that it had obviously fallen out in the taxi when I got my purse out to pay (I know I had it when I got in the taxi as I had just taken pictures of the statues on the bridge). I did ask the hotel if they could contact the taxi companies for me to see if they could track it down, but they said it was too difficult. Apparently every taxi in Florence is white and unless I could tell them the company and the number of the cab they couldn’t help. Bitterly disappointed, I returned to my room to finish packing. I was disappointed to lose the hundreds of photos I’d taken of Pisa, San Gimignano, Siena, the wedding and Florence. I toyed vaguely with the idea of dragging my larger camera out of the case and rushing back into town to try and take some pictures, but of course I knew that I would never manage to capture all the ones I’d previously taken in the short time available and with the heat I couldn’t really face spending almost 2 hours walking into and out of town. I decided that it gave me a good excuse to visit Florence and all the other places I’d so enjoyed on the holiday again and I knew that I would be able to get wedding photos from others. Instead I decided to go for a long swim in the hotel pool.
With only a couple of hours left before I had to leave for the airport I decided to have lunch in the hotel. I had just chosen a chicken salad when the storm started. What started as a little downpour with a bit of thunder and lightning soon turned into a monsoon that seemed as if it would never stop. Lucky I hadn't chosen to go into town otherwise i would have been caught in it. Twenty minutes later and the old part of the hotel was flooding. The concierge suggested that I leave for the airport early as the weather had got so bad he was worried that I might not be able to get there. By the time the taxi arrived about 20 minutes later the flooding had reached the step of the hotel and I had to wade through an ankle deep lake to reach it. The journey took ages as we had to make many diversions, several of the roads were closed, trees having come down across them, also because of flooding and in places those large rubbish bins had been blown into the road blocking them. Finally we reached the airport, but by the time I got inside I was soaked. I spent the next couple of hours waiting for check in to open (thank god I had my I-Pod with me) and when it finally did I was glad to get down to the departure lounge. Firenze airport is not large and the duty free was closed, but there was a shop selling Italian produce and I bought a couple of bottles of Vernaccia di San Gimignano, a couple of bars of chilli and absinthe chocolate and some biscuits for work before settling down to wait for the plane.
Obviously the bad weather had delayed all the planes and we were held up for an hour or so, but the rain finally stopped and everything started to get back on track. Of course the rain started again just before it was time for me to get on the plane and we got soaked running for the bus, then having to sit around (with the doors open in the freezing cold, the temperature having dropped about 20 degrees) for about 15 minutes before we finally got taken to the plane. Fortunately, the rain stopped just before we took off so we had a smooth flight home, finally arriving back about 9pm.
I had a wonderful time in Italy and loved every place I visited, especially Florence, which has now become my second home after New Orleans. I can’t wait to go back again, and I look forward to visiting other parts of the country in the future too.
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