always a bridesmaid, never a tourist

during my four years living and working in florence, i always dreamed of how nice it would be to just be in this city purely as a tourist without any obligations or things that had to be done. during our last months here i put a number of things off until the magical two-week visit that awaited us between the US and Haifa. by then we would have stopped working, given up our apartment and tied up all the loose ends of our life here. we would have nothing to do but roam the streets and gaze at the arno from ponte vecchio without a care in the world. as luck, or nature, would have it, i was pregnant when we came back and experienced my only two weeks of morning sickness exactly during our time in florence.
so when the idea of this trip came up and i would be here two weeks (ha!10 days) with my parents, one would think i wouldn't get my hopes up of donning my sandals and cameras and heading out with the glorious history of this place already scribbled in my head. but i did. and i shouldn't have. i've accepted the fact that this city won't let me just be. it has to tangle me in somehow so i feel like i'm truly at home.
take today for example. aliyah has been having fevers on and off for the past three or four days. the sores around her mouth that i thought were caused by her pacifier rubbing against her ever-drooling-teeth-breaking mouth seemed to be getting worse and more serious. so today i thought i should drop by another pharmacy for a second opinion. we had just come out of the duomo (which i can say that i did only twice in those four years, even though i lived 500 meters away from it and passed it every single day on my way to work) and i was feeling pretty pumped about the few waking hours aliyah had ahead of her. we took a picture and stopped by this pharmacy in that same square. the pharmacist told me that maybe aliyah should see a dermatologist and he gave me to the address of a place waaaaaay on the other side of town (near where the viale meets the arno by pzza beccheria, bicbic). so i haul it over there and find two nurses, one who turns out to be persian, and they tell me there's nothing they can do. what aliyah really needs is a pediatrician. where? via pico della mirandola. where is the house in which we're staying? on a 200 meter street called via pico della mirandola. the whole time this children's hospital was literally four doors away from us. so i went...somewhere between the viale and stopping by home to get aliyah's passport, she fell asleep. and so immediately after the doctor (she's fine. got her medicine), she was ready for a nap. a couple hours later she and i went to one of my former students' (a pharmacist, actually) house where another pharmacist student and her husband and 5-month old joined us all for dinner. one infant, two 1-year olds, a 4-year old, some hair pulling and a lot of drool.
and that was my day as a tourist in florence.
no complaints. :^)