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part 3: paris to florence

we have fifty minutes from the time we land in paris to the time our connecting flight leaves for florence, and the terminal we have to get to is, naturally, at the other end of the world. i'm so grossed out by the trappings of modern convenience by now that i refuse to set foot on the automatic walkways and instead shuffle my suitcase from raw palm to raw palm as i half-jog through the habitrail that is charles de gaulle. as we scoot along i look out the floor-to-ceiling window at the hill that slopes down from the edge of the parking lot to the ground floor of the building. it's beautiful, covered not in grass but with ivy, the entire thing a rippling sheet of reaching vines, though marred by the occasional bit of trapped rubbish or snagged plastic bag. i wonder if there's one hundred-foot square on the planet that doesn't have any plastic in it at all. toadie, despite being a good six inches shorter than me, very gamely trots alongside me, even though, unbeknownst to me, the woman at the check-in desk told her we were in danger of missing our plane. she doesn't reveal this to me until we get to the metal detectors and she is pulled aside and told to open her bag, at which point she recommends that i go on ahead of her. i tell her i'd rather die, and besides, i don't know what we're supposed to do once we get to florence. so i wait and watch a guard spend several minutes rooting through toadie's delicates, only to then decide that that thing he saw must have been the metal clip on the outside of the bag. what i decide is that it's apropos that "douche" is a french word, but i rapidly change my mind about blaming the entire nation for one man's reeking jerkiness. that would be wrong, and i know this because i am so deeply wounded when people from other countries assume that being american means supporting every decision made by the current american government. not so, my international readers, not so, but we can delve into that some other time.

the boarding gate leads us to a cement-walled spiral staircase instead of an airplane, and we think for a moment that we've either somehow made a drastically wrong turn (even though we never turned) or that we are going to be abducted and tortured, but in reality we only board a shuttle bus that takes us to our very tiny plane—it seats about 96 (yes, i am dorky enough to have counted). i feel better this time, going up in this very tiny plane—better, but not good. it taxis around for what i think must be at least 30 minutes. i'm so drowsy and dimwitted that i can't pay a whole lot of attention to the goings-on of the aircraft, but i am shocked when i suddenly realize, maybe ten minutes after my groggy brain assumed we must have taken off, that we are still lazily meandering around the lot. i start to wonder how much gas we've used up doing so, but my mind won't have it and instead tells me a story about my left butt cheek and the wonderful dream it's been having since it fell asleep, something about tempur-pedic foam and NAP panties, i don't really know. it was far more comforting than my original thought, though, and i give my mind credit for that.

when we do finally leave the ground, i find the take-off far more captivating than the one from logan. because the plane is so small, you can actually feel its speed and trajectory as they change. the sensation is more honestly of flying now; before, it was like an extra-cramped ride on the subway. i don't have a window, but the seats are much more comfortable than on the last flight. toadie's sleeping, and i'm glad, because it means in have an excuse to make her drive the rental car.

the steward hands me a cold wet-nap in a foil pouch, and for some reason it's the most amazing thing i've ever held. i clutch it in my grimy fist instead of using it and think i might finally be able to drift off. lo and behold, it's true.

i come to toward the end of the ride. toadie awakens briefly to devour what she has apparently deemed a finer-quality shrink-wrapped danish, but she flinches at what she tells me is a tub of sour cream. other people are eating theirs with spoons, and i wonder if it isn't plain yogurt, but i'm in no mood to debate it with her. to offer you a point of reference, toadie, a born-and-bred irish-catholic bostonian, has never eaten mashed potatoes because she thinks they smell funny; if you would care to sit next to her in a snug airplane cabin and convince her to eat a mystery dairy product, i will do my best to arrange it for you—but i will not help you.

and we land. this descent is much harder on my ears, for whatever reason, but i can't chew gum because of my screwy jaw, so i suck it up, because, well, because i have no option. there is no security at the florence airport—no metal detectors, no one checking passports, nothing. i guess they assume those things will have been sufficiently covered at the other end. we're surprised but relieved, as we've tired of being handled. toadie's friend, our soon-to-be hostess, supposedly instructed us to take a train from the airport (i never spoke directly to her, as i don't directly know her), so we head outside and look for something that might be a train station. after about five minutes we head back inside to ask someone to direct us to something that might be a train station, and a high-strung man with dark-blonde hair and a crazy, crazy mustache points us toward the bus stop. "no, that's the bus stop," we say. "yes, bus to train, you take, it goes," he says. this leads to what will be the first of many, many narrowings of the eyes on my part re our hostess and her tendency to misinform, but we'll cover those as we come to them. for now, bus to train it is.