On Some Irritations of Daily Life in Florence

There’s a steep learning curve to staying in a long-term rental in Italy.

A car. We eliminated one spike of the learning curve by staying close enough to the center that we don’t need a car. Instead, we walk into town on one side or another of the Arno – gorgeous – and get in our 10,000 steps without any need to count. Walking is also cheaper and less hassle than driving: the whole historic center of Florence is limited to authorized traffic (buses and taxis), and parking is expensive. For longer trips, we’re lucky enough to live two blocks from a taxi stand (where there are always taxis waiting if you don’t need them and none if you do). So far, only one cab driver has been terrifying and insane.

We rarely miss the car. I do, however, miss my washer and dryer back home. Washing machines in Italy are tiny and can take hours to run a small load. (I mean that literally. To put a set of sheets through the wash and then add a centrifuge cycle takes at least two hours.) As to dryers — no one even owns one. People air-dry their laundry.

On a sunny day, I love hanging out my daily load of wash. The little dog next door barks as I peg pants and tops to the drying rack or drape sheets over the balcony. And although a tall hedge screens our garden from those of our neighbors, I enjoy seeing their shirts and sheets flapping gently on an upstairs clothesline. It lends our garden a friendly and almost festive feel. But on damp days – let alone rainy days – the house feels cluttered with drying laundry. Air-dried towels come out stiff and scratchy. The whole process is time-consuming. And don’t get me started on the difficulties of finding a scent-free laundry detergent.

Every time we’ve come to Italy, we’ve stayed in rentals, so we now accept tiny washing machines as a fact of life. Chissa, as the Italians say (put the accent on the second syllable, throw up both your hands) – who knows, not having a dryer is probably better for the environment. But there have been other skills we’ve had to master this time.

Grocery shopping. Every time we’ve traveled to Italy, we’ve stayed for one week – all my teaching schedule allowed – and we’ve always rented apartments or houses. Those places had espresso machines and enough pods to get us started. They had a small assortment of basic spices on the shelves and often breakfast food for the first morning – a very welcome courtesy of our hosts. Since we ate out once a day, at least, we did small shops of prepared foods, mostly from Conad stores (well set up for tourists). I came to take such details for granted.

This time we arrived at a house that had nothing. I exaggerate, of course: it was well stocked with pots and pans, plates and cups, and utensils. (High-end, too, and very pretty.) But the food items included only salt in a box, a sugar bowl, a low-end drip coffee-pot, and some coffee in a tin. No salt-shaker. No pepper grinder or spices. No espresso machine. Because we’d been delayed for six hours in Paris, we arrived at the end of two long days of travel, and the person who let us in (forty-five minutes late) instructed us in a rush about the gas stove (she couldn’t figure out the oven), some very complicated arrangements about keys, and the washing machine (outdoors). I was exhausted and annoyed by the time we unpacked, just on the verge of depressed.

As an added irritant (literally, again), the sheets were heavily scented. My travel cocoon kept me from the worst of it, but my skin was bright red and itchy the next day.

Even so, we woke up the next morning and rallied. We were on an Italian adventure! All adventures include obstacles! I’d been a Girl Scout, my husband a Boy Scout – we could cope! First, we recruited our strength. (We ate omelets and drank espresso in the neighborhood bar.) Then we assessed the territory. (We used our maps function to track down a supermarket, a Coop — Italians say it as one syllable.) It was half a mile away, and we needed lots of food. Fortunately, we found a very useful wheelie-bag in the kitchen, added a few carry bags for travel, and set off.

It’s a walk we have come to love: two blocks down to the river, then across the Arno on the Ponte San Niccolo – with a gorgeous view of the Florentine skyline one direction, of the soft Tuscan hills in the other — and then pretty side-streets up to the Coop.

The walk back is never quite as much fun: we are weighed down by groceries and impeded by a wheelie that behaves like a disobedient puppy. Every block or so, it bangs into one’s heel, then tilts over onto its side. The handle keeps falling apart. (At what kind of store does one find duct tape in Italy????) And it has to be man-handled up the steep stairs to our street. As a compensation, hauling that wheeling behind me makes me feel like a real Italian nana.

As to the grocery store itself – well, Italian supermarkets are not like Whole Foods. The cashiers do not smile at you and cheerily ask how your day is or if you found everything you needed. These cashiers could care less. They make few concessions to our halting Italian. They’re not rude, exactly — just preoccupied, as if they are solving difficult math problems while they’re checking people out. People shopping in the store are the same. They are getting the shopping done, as expeditiously as possible. And you – you who are dithering over various cheeses you’ve never heard of or trying to translate the packaging on your carton of milk – you are in the way.
We shopped once at rush hour, on our way back from visiting Santa Croce. By the time we got back, we needed an hour on the couch with a glass of wine to recuperate.

Now we shop mid-morning or mid-afternoon. At 10 a.m., I can find a quiet corner and ask my translation app to tell me how to order sliced roast beef (arrosto di manzo, affetato) at the deli counter or inquire from the young man unloading the oranges where I can find shelled walnuts for a salad (noci sguisciate). I can spend ten minutes reading every label of every detergent for detergente senza profumo. (I finally found one that boasted of being anallergico. There was exactly one bottle. It works, but I shudder at the prospect of running out.)

The bus. Theoretically, it’s not so hard. You buy a ticket at a tabaccheria (or newsstand or any stand with an ATAF sticker on it), board the correct bus, validate your ticket at the machine as you enter (it’s good for ninety minutes), and get off at your stop. Last spring, when we stayed in Fiesole, we quickly got the hang of taking the bus down to Florence. The Number 7 came about every twenty minutes, stopped at the Piazza San Marco, and wasn’t full except at rush hour. We learned to enter through the front door (because the validating machine is towards the front) and exit in the middle. We learned that stop for the Piazza San Marco is on a side-street before one can see the piazza, and we memorized what its name was. We enjoyed watching other people.

Now we are staying near the Piazza Ferrucci, and we are thoroughly stumped. The Number 23 and the C4 are both supposed to stop somewhere around – we’ve even seen the buses themselves! We have wandered around the entire Piazza like lost souls, and we have yet to find either a ticket seller or a bus stop. I will figure it out before we leave. I swear I will. 

So those are some of the irritations of daily life here. I’ll bet I don’t have to tell you what some of the pleasures are . . . .