The Grand Walking Tour of Ancient Medici land in Florence

I think Jenny is going to get spoilt by all this travelling to the cultural capitols of the world with me we packed all our stuff, me for travelling onwards to Malabo and Jenny for 4 days in the sun. I organised taxis for pick cleared all my existing mail and packed all the computer bits and pieces I had bought on the internet, including headsets and cameras for the internet and 160 GB HDD for me to copy all my DVD’s onto a DVD- burner and case. I packed all the extra clothes I picked up in the house and packed them into a spare case Jenny brought with her. She took just enough clothing for her over the 4 days we were going to be in Florence together, We flew together from Manchester to Florence in Business class, this was purely and wonderfully accidental, as I have a frequent flyer card we were in the business class check in queue, some poncy sales rep thought I looked too rough for that queue and asked me in a rather condescending manner if I was business class and I just said yes without a second thought so when we checked in I automatically said can we have two seats together and the guy said yes and he must have just checked Jenny’s ticket which was the only one I could get that was on the same flights as me and it was business booked through my Airmiles card. So I got an automatic upgrade without even asking for it, I was nice to look down my nose at the poncy git anyway. We had an hour to kill in paris so we went to the business lounge and I had a few drinks and packed my bag with the bottles of water as I new they would be expensive in Florence. We flounced about in our poshness and felt great flying away together to this cultural centre and Jenny was in Heaven just setting foot in France as she is keen to learn the language and has always wanted to travel through Europe and this was her first time. We got to the check in and just as we were showing our boarding passes it was pointed out that I was on this flight and she was on the next, her face was utter shock and disappointment. I had to leave her there looking bewildered saying I would wait for her in Florence, it really screwed things up for us and probably cost us a full day sightseeing. I had to wait 2 hours in a pisspot airport in Florence whiling away my time by getting maps and hotel lists and ringing the office asking where they were going to book us in and that I wouldn’t make it int the office as I was waiting for my wife and to arrange a later date for the meeting with my manager. Jenny arrived and looked very relieved to see me at the arrivals gate, she did remind me that she had no money and no credit card and no phone numbers of the relatives in the UK just in case of something happening to me, it was all common sense but I had overlooked it all in the rush to get things organised for my trips. We went straight to the hotel and unpacked our crap and crashed out in the hotel, we popped into a little takeaway for Italian food about 50 metres from the hotel and had some stale pizza and some expensive snacks but as it is Florence and with it being on the Airport run you can expect to get some terrible service. Next morning we showered best we could in the minute shower and the shower mat was a great piece of medieval torture equipment, like a thousand spikes piercing your feet and making the shower an endurance test to see how long you could stay in the shower before having to jump out and scream out loud with the pain. We got to the office on time at 9.00am and was met by Zofia our office contact and very efficient administrator, she is very tall has perfect Italian and English which for a Polish girl is amazing, she does happen also to have married a local Italian turbine tech which helps I suppose. I met my expenses girl and asked for my new credit card to which she could find no reference or any mail I sent her asking for it, but I did get the paperwork signed for a delivery to my Costa Rican address. I completed all my outstanding expenses and timesheets. Got my air tickets changed for my return trip to Malabo hopefully for the last time I was thinking. I also was able to download all Jenny’s huge university attachments very quickly as the office has a very fast internet link. I enjoyed that part and we planned a meeting with my manager for 11.00 am. We trundled across the road from our office , it is only 150 metres away and got our security badge and walked to meet this man of mystery who had demanded my presence at such an awkward time for me. As soon as I laid eyes on him I realised he was one of the gang of guys I had worked with in California in 2001, I was amazed as how small the world the turbine business is and the guy who was stood with him turned out to be a guy I had worked with in Norway in 2000 on the Eldfisk platform in the north sea. You could have knocked me down with a feather. This immediately made for a very easy start to the meeting and we just joked about the job we had been on and the guys and life in California, we went outside for a coffee in the glorious sunshine of Florence and chatted a bit more about Malabo and how I didn’t enjoy the slow life in operations and that I wanted to go back on commissioning. It came to pass that I mentioned the fact I had worked for a competitor and I was used to working on many different types of turbines and his eyes opened up like he had seen some spirit coming down from heaven it turned out I had offered myself up for a job he had been searching for someone to do. He said he had a little job in Nigeria for a controls guy with experience and it would only be a couple of trips, I thought about how I have been trying to get on the big Brazilian project and if I did them the favour of completing the Nigerian job I would get some payback with the Brazilian job, I know it is wrong of me to think like that but I have to motivate myself with that sort of attitude, I even mentioned that I had been after the job in Brazil a couple of times and he said he had no notification of any customer requests for staff yet, so he didn’t know anything about it yet. I basically agreed to do the Nigerian job as I am desperate to get off these goddam nightshifts, they are killing me. So he showed me the new training room where they send all the new recruits , I thought it was a nice gesture but irrelevant and then he said thanks for coming and he’ll see me the next time I get a new project, and waved me goodbye, I was shocked to find after 1 ½ hours of chatting that the meeting was over, Jenny was also completely shocked to see her husband treated like a visiting dignitary and sent on his way with a smile, so unlike anything she had ever experienced in Costa Rica. We both found it rather amusing that the company spent so much money on me flying in for 4 days all expense paid trip to have a quick chat over coffee about things in general. I cannot say I dislike it in fact I love the job and the way I am treated, it is a deserved response to all the hard work I put in over the years being the dogs body. So Jenny and myself went back to lunch and sat in the sunshine and had a seafood salad, hot beef sandwich and fruit salad for desert and it was fantastic, better than the MacDonalds we had in London. We sauntered back to the office to pick up my onward airtickets to Malabo and complete any outstanding paperwork. We got into the office and was promised the tickets at 4.00pm but that left not time to do any sightseeing that afternoon. We sat doing mail and anything to forget the time and at 5.00 Jenny was getting frustrated and letting me know and accidentally Zofia was overhearing us and she kept asking the travel agency when the tickets were coming finally at 5.15pm we were finally told they had no one to deliver them so we packed up and shot off out to catch the train into Florence, and it was a very short and sedate journey of about 10 minutes which would have taken 20 by car. We immediately started our marathon walk around the town, first to the Duomo, 15th centuary cathedral with a St Pauls type domed tower, and then to the Palace Vecchio where the filthy rich Medici family lived and then to the river and the bridge Ponte Vecchio,


where the Medici family had a private walkway built over the road to be able to walk to the Palace Pitti there new place across the river, without touching the filthy peasants and of course getting wet, fantastic wealth in all its guises. We ate in a local taverna as I would call it and the food was OK nothing to shout home about and a beer and we were done for the night, we got a taxi back to the hotel and fell into a deep both of us after all the activity and early start for the airport.