Angels Are Around; Angel #3

Introducing angel #3 - David

I had to go to uffizi Anagrafe at Piazza della Liberta that day to get the Stato di Familia form, it's one of a step to make before applying the stay permitt from de Commune. I had a piece of paper with all steps I had to follow to get to the Piazza della Liberta and to find the uffizi. I had the address and it stated that the building is round and red. 

I checked my map and bus route to finally hopped into bus no 12 to get to the Liberta. I stopped at fermata Leonardo da Vinci #3 which was too far from where I should. I could have just stopped at Liberta but was so stuck to the route explanation that said I could stop at another bus stop which much closer to the uffici than Leonardo da Vinci#3. Anyway, I stopped and had to walk back to get to the piazza Liberta. 

I searched and looked around to find the red round building to find that all buildings at Liberta are square. I finally asked a magazine seller and he pointed to a road on the right side of the piazza, and it was not Liberta, it was a different road. I crossed the road and got there still puzzled of where the uffizi located exactly. When I turn on that road appointed by the magazine seller, I finally saw this round building and entered the yard. 

Our First Trip to Lucca - Lucca Comic 2012 Event

We decided to buy 2 tickets to Lucca on that rainy afternoon at Stazione Firenze S.M.N. The next day would be our first trip to explore another medieval town in Tuscany, Lucca.

That next morning of November 1st, 2012 we arrived at the station by bus and bumped into some Chinese tourists with their bulky cameras, a notebook sized of i-Pads and camera phones. Near them were two Italian girls, one of them dressed up in devilish Halloween costume; one of the Chinese man, laughed and tapped the girl with the costume on her shoulder, asked if he could take photos with her. The girl laughed and let all those Chinese tourists surrounded her, posed for them and enjoyed her moment being "a star" with “fans”.

We laughed and quickly ran to the platform to check the announcement board with all itinerary schedules. We finally got on the right train, only amazed to find the train was so full with young people, not only that, some of them looked extremely strange as they dressed up in Halloween costumes. Some even painted their faces into skeleton look. We thought, of course it’s Halloween and apparently it’s a big event in Italy. Young people proudly walked around in their weird devilish costumes celebrating Halloween, schools had some special events to celebrate it and encouraged their students to actively participate.

The Adventure of The Real Man's Wallet

Jos’ wallet was somehow left in the car of Alex, his friend, who gave us a nice ride to Italy and to Switzerland.  In short, Alex went back to Holland the next early morning while we were still sleeping and the wallet was also gone all the way back to Holland with him. We both just realized that before noon, when we were getting ready to walk in and around the village called Oberdiessbach near Thun. The wallet made us down a bit, kind of blaming ourselves or a bit of blaming each other for not checking the front seats of the car when we arrived and stepped out of the car last midnight. However, we still fortunate as God let us surrounded by good people and friends who helped us generously. So even though we had no cash on hand, somehow we still managed to enjoy our holiday and paid our spending. The wallet was also mailed from Utrecht to Florence by Alex, and it was arranged to arrive in Florence on a day or two after our arrival.

We got a series of numbers, a code from PostNL to trace the package. Guess what? It’s been two weeks since we arrived and yet we haven’t got the package, and sadly, we or it was more I, began to worry. It was a period of test of my patient endurance. Checked on PostNL site and asked the package under the code number at PosteItalia were also not helping. I prayed that night for God’s help to find the wallet coz I believe He knows where it is exactly. That day when Jos has his 1^st day meeting at school and I was home alone, browsing the site of PostNL, wondering why the package was remained untraced. Finally, I found the customer service number and gave the number to Jos when he came back home. Jos spoke with one of the customer service shortly after that, and got a new Italian code number to trace the package in Italy. He was also informed that instead of handled by PosteItalia, the package was handled by an Italian Int’l Courier Service called DPD.

We were so happy with the information, immediately googled for DPD site to find their phone number. The next challenge was when Jos calling the phone number and a female voice on the other side said,”Pronto…..bla…bla…bla….” all in Italian, and we both looked at each other’s face, confused, and started to giggled as we both understood NONE of what she just said.