Sandy and I were wandering the streets of Florence on a Friday morning between museum visits and happened across this fountain in a nearly empty piazza. It was a residential part of the city, but I don’t remember the name of the piazza or street. (Later, reader Brandyn provided this information in a comment: “This…

Thursday, 12 ottobre 2006 Sandy and I were pretty beat but we had been strongly advised to try to get on the Italian schedule as quickly as possible and not to crash until around 9 p.m. We decided to walk around without any real agenda except to find something simple to eat. One of the…

A ghostly view of San Lorenzo Cathedral, late at night.

I’ve never been comfortable with flying, and at times I’ve had a full-blown, knee-gripping, catatonia-inducing phobia about it. I did okay the last time I flew. That would be the time that I unknowingly flew through Greensboro and Charlotte airports with a box-cutter in my purse. It was taken away from me in Orlando on…