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.

Genova - Liguria - Italy

 The hotel we're in was built in 1897 (we think - it might have been 1891?).  It has operated as a hotel that whole time and was the first hotel here.  They still use the old phone.

Hah, just kidding.  That's the phone in the ELEVATOR.  One of those fun ones where you have to open the two doors, then close the two doors before you push your floor button.  When you arrive at your floor, you have to open the two doors on the OTHER side of the elevator, get out, then close those two doors again so the contraption can carry on it's mission of making people slightly nervous about whether their will is up to date.

And, btw, that's the ONLY elevator for the hotel.  If we were closer to the lobby instead of being on the 5th floor, I'd be giving the stairs more of a workout.  As it is, I'm only taking them to go down.  Not up.  Lazy - yes, and cranky knees.

I didn't sleep last night.  Suffering from jet lag I guess.  I also like to read for a while before bed, and what do you supposed landed in my inbox from the library just when I was leaving home?  Yup - Steven King's Fairy Tale.  It is very good so far, which also makes it a challenge to fall asleep.

And, we are eating supper very late for me - 7:30 last night is when we sat down for a wonderful meal of pesto gnocchi, then sea bream, then coffee flavour semifreddo for dessert.  We got back to our room at 9:50 pm with a full stomach.  

I can't even talk about our first night meal in Milan - it was at Casa Tua, and consisted of eight courses, along with many bottles of wine.  That night I thought I was going to explode.  But running on zero sleep over the previous 24 hours I fell into bed and konked out.  In the morning, Janice remarked that at one point she wondered if I was dead.

Here, our little breakfast cafe in the hotel is really cute, done in reds and pinks.  This is the first time I've seen any hint of vegetables.  At breakfast???

Today we had a morning walking tour over to the waterfront, which finished at noon.  We travelers (37 of us) were released on our own recognizance until dinner at 7:30 tonight.  Janice and I browsed the shops for a couple hours - look at the beautiful floors on the outdoor pathways!

We didn't buy anything and both of us were kind of running out of steam.  First we got lost in that downtown area, but managed to find our way back to the waterfront so we could retrace our morning tour to get back to the hotel.

Unfortunately, we took a wrong turn somewhere and got lost as f**k when we were within 5 minutes of our hotel.  We came upon a nice lady & her husband who were taking their two dogs for a walk.  The wife convinced him to lead us in the proper direction while she continued on with the dog walkies.

When we manged to get back to our room, I had a couple glasses of water and we both passed out for a nap.  The weather is gorgeous, sunny & warm.  This is the view out our window.  It's on a rather busy road, so every couple minutes "Anthony" lets "Vincente" know that he's a terrible driver, if you get my meaning.  And emergency vehicles are also running by regularly with their horns blaring.

Tomorrow we have another half-day tour and then we'll be heading to Chiavari for two nights.  More adventures await!