What Lena Did

I learned a valuable lesson today (not for the first time, as it happens) that I’d like to share with you all: As a rule, don’t think that you know better than the guide book.

I wanted to take a day trip to Fiesole to look at the Etruscan ruins and study the Roman excavations. Oh, who am I kidding. I wanted to go because Susan Coolidge wrote about it in “What Katy Did Next.” There’s a great scene with Katy and Mrs Ashe in the amphitheatre that describes their day there, and the flowers on the walls, and then Lieutenant Worthington turns up, and oh, the romance. (that was my childhood self, before I got all hardbitten and cynical).

Well, the guidebook said to take the number 7 bus, and some Americans I talked to said to take the number 7 bus, but I decided to take a train, because I’d seen a timetable to Fiesole, and trains don’t make me carsick.

The only problem being that the Fiesole station isn’t actually in Fiesole, which I realised as soon as I stepped onto the platform, and which is the sort of Italianism that makes your head explode once in a while.

No, the Fiesole station is in Cardine, of course, which is a place of no literary interest a few miles away (and downhill from) Fiesole, and doesn’t have another train going back in the other direction for 7 hours.

No problem, I thought. I’m in Italy, I will be calm and live in the moment, and enjoy the nice weather while I wait two hours for the bus that I see is actually going to Fiesole (and which I verified with the owner and customers of the tobacconist- see, I’m learning). Va bene. So I bought a Sudoku book, and begged a pencil off the lady in the post office, and waited for two hours, and then waved at the number 45 bus as it sailed past me (with the driver looking RIGHT AT ME).

Have you ever felt that you are NEVER GOING TO BE ABLE TO LEAVE a place, that you will die from exposure there and will have to be buried there in an unmarked grave because no-one knows who you are, and even your family will forget your name in a year and start referring to you as “the one who disappeared in Italy”, though cognitively you know that probably isn’t true? That’s how I felt, looking at the back of that bus.

Anyway, to skip forward, that afternoon did find me finally stepping nauseatedly off a bus in the central Piazza of Fiesole, all prepared to loathe the place by this point. But it was actually quite charming, and the Etruscan and Roman remains were genuinely interesting. There were roses by the Roman theatre, there’s a lovely little church at the tip top of the hill, and a spectacular view of Florence and the area. My dad happened to ring as I was sitting there, so I had the vista and conversation for a very pleasant hour, before taking the bus home.





The Roman Theatre
















Roman or possibly Etruscan temple ruins













View over Florence