Guilt By Association

 Janice and I are spending our last five days in Italy quarantined in our hotel room.  Because I have Covid.  I tested positive on Friday morning, and yes, I feel like total crap.  I've had the worst headache, that does not want to go away without drugs.  Tylenol to the rescue.  Janice is NOT sick, but because she's traveling with me she is automatically considered infected too.

I'll share a bit of our LAST day out...

The 5th was a free morning so we wandered around town, went to the post office so I could mail some postcards, and did some shopping.

In the afternoon we piled on the tour bus and headed off to the town of Lucca.  Our first stop was the Villa Reale.

We got quite a bit of history during our walk around the gardens.  Napoleon sent his sister here, much to her chagrin.

She renovated, built gardens, and kicked out the Bishop who lived in the villa behind hers.  She removed all the separation(s) between the two villas and put in a really big yard. 

I wish we had the opportunity to go through the residence, I would love to have seen inside.  It was bought and sold a few times - one guy bought it for his wife.  Um, honey... you might need to up your game!!  The most recent purchase - 2015 - was for 45-ish million euro, and the renovations were completed over two years.

After the grounds tour (the maintenance guys were zipping around on John Deere Gators, for any of you farmer/country folk) we got back on the bus and went to the walled city of Lucca for a tour and dinner.  

After dinner is when I mentioned to Janice that I didn't feel very well and might be staying home the next day.  Well, when morning rolled around and I confirmed that I was staying here she reached into her little bag of tricks and threw a covid test at me.

FYI, if you're lucky enough to have avoided taking a test, TWO lines is a bad sign. 😷

We have been told that Italy has very loose restrictions around covid.  We are apparently (?) allowed to go out if we're masked, as long as we get the hell off the hotel property and don't associate with anyone else from the tour group.  I am #6 from our group of 38 who I know have tested positive.  And I'm pretty sure I know who I got it from - a fella I sat beside at dinner on our first night.  He seemed perfectly healthy but didn't come out with us the next day and was then in quarantine for several days.  I've been in no condition to go anywhere, between sleeping and coughing and zero energy.  Janice has gone out a few times to the shops; after all someone had to buy us a thermometer and more rapid tests.  Oh, and parmesan cheese.  It seems we needed that too. lol.