Trailing Spouse Dies and Goes to Heaven - Vespa Heaven

One of the best days of my life started out really badly. I usually love Mondays because everyone goes back to work - leaving the roads and stores for me. "Monday - Monday - don't trust that day."

We got up early at our Pontedera hotel after waiting two days for the Piaggio Vespa Museum and Plant to open. After breakfast we briskly traced our 1/4 mile path from the hotel to museum. When we got to the gate - to my chagrin the sign said, "Museum closed Mondays." Obviously not everyone returned to work this Monday. We sulked back to the hotel certain that we could kill the extra day on some other touristy thing.

Lulu told our hotel desk clerk our bad news. He got on the phone to the plant for us. He talked to a young lady - Maxil - and told her our troubles. After a roller coaster high - then a low - we were back up to the top when she said we could come to the plant and she would open the museum for us. We hustled back to the museum and pressed the buzzer. Turns out Maxil was the plant's librarian and media archivist - and she recognized Lulu's name and wanted to meet her. Not really - that would be a better story - but Maxil was just being nice to Americans.

She opened the door - flipped on the lights - and I felt that I had met my maker and was in heaven. There were Vespas everywhere almost one of eeach of the 160 models produced since 1946.

A little history. Enrico Piaggio was an Italian industrialist long before World War II. They built al sorts of mechanical items - even airplanes and train cars - but nothing earth shattering. During the war - Pontedera and Piaggio Company were bombed into the stone age.The roads and railroads were left as piles of rubble. To add insult to all this - the allies refused to let Piaggio build planes again.

When given lemons - make lemon aid. Piaggio had all these airplane parts and decided to use them to build scooters. The rest is history. He developed a line of scooters heralded as the best ever. And I fell for the hype and bought a few.

Lulu tolerated my three hours romp through scooterland - and then we left. Although it was after 12:00 - the hotel desk clerk allowed us to check out and ge ton our way to Florence and then Rome for a couple days before it was time to go home.

We checked our email at the hotel. There was an email from Bill Woodyard another FSU professor. He was teaching at the FSU campus in Florence and asked us to be his guest. It took 10 second sot put his address in our GPS and rush off to the train station to Firenze (Florence).

When we arrived in Florence - the cab took us right to FSU campus - really a small very old building just a block our two from Florence Cathedral. Bill greeted us and took us to his apartment. On the outside it was this quaint Italian 4th floor walkup - but inside it was beautiful.

After Bill's class - we all went out to dinner - toured downtown a bit - had some gelato ice cream - and headed back to the flat. I did a load of laundry and hung it out on the patio overlooking the city.

It is 11:30 now - but I have to get all this down before I forget the details. Tomorrow - we will catch a train to Rome after walking around Florence a bit. But tonight - I sit here in the dark on the balcony - thanks to the unlocked wi-fi signal of "SpeedTouch542899".

Good things happen in 3's. First - a private VIP tour of the Vespa Museum - then an invitation to a free night in downtown Florence - and finally a free internet signal to send the story home to tell my best friends. Once again - Monday morning has not failed me. I hope your day was good too - but I will have to go a long time to top this Monday Monday.