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| Balcony at Via Corso 2 |
If you look carefully in the upper left corner of this picture, you will see Brunelleschi's dome. The building next door is under renovation and the staging obscures half of it. We took this final shot on our balcony for a remembrance as we head out of Florence. The situation has become untenable here for vacationers. Residents are asked to stay indoors. Supermarkets are closed week-ends. Restaurants must close by 6pm and keep customers a meter apart. If you are familiar with Italian dining customs, you will find this amusing. That is, if anything about this can be found amusing. I feel a great deal of sympathy for the Italians. We have had wonderful experiences with them. So many of the businesses rely upon tourism. This will be an economic calamity for them. Our tour with the apartment owner, Piero, was cancelled. Both he and the manager, Raffaella, urged us to leave Italy. She arranged our taxi and is coming by tomorrow with masks. The Siena and Bologna apartment rentals are cancelled by agreement with the owners.
We cooperated and stayed indoors today plotting our way out of Italy. We discovered that TAP had changed our April 1 departure to April 2 and our departure city from Florence to Bologna. Their website and telephone numbers led to dead ends. We eventually got through to the service we booked with, and it was agreed those changes warranted a cancellation/refund. We will need to wait 6-8 weeks to see approval for that. As the operator said, "There are a lot of cancellations now." When we attempted to book a new flight out of Florence, the price was over $2000. I believe a bit of gouging is going on here. We found a more reasonable rate out of Rome. So, tomorrow we will take the train to Rome, stay overnight and depart on Thursday for Lisbon. There, our dear friends John and Kathy will host us while we determine our next move. It's 72 there today, and we think that's terrific.
Observations of two visitors.
An 8 hour telephone call on hold to request help is ridiculous.
We will never use Kyak again!
