3. The ticket

I had nowhere specific to go or to be--in fact I had become a traveler without a destination. I wanted to explore Europe and here I was.  

Elisabetta's proposal was just the ticket. I could work part-time here near Florence, see the sights, maybe learn a little Italian, eat steady, sleep dry and live.

My second-floor room was fine--bed, desk, chair, bath down the hall, heavy wooden door, window in the thick stone wall with a view of the patio and the rising farmland behind the old mansion--vineyards and the signature cypress trees of Tuscany. The view was so stunning in fact that I made the social error of leaving the solid wood shutters open the first day I moved in. This is not done. Open shutters anywhere in the house raised the indoor temperature noticeably and I was told to please keep the shutters closed during the day.

Another resident worker, Maria, had an apartment in the eastern wing of the house. Fiori, the maintenance man, lived with his wife and children in a nearby village and Elisabetta, the owner, manager, head cook and everything else  lived in a larger downstairs apartment.

The B&B rental rooms were mostly near mine on the second floor but there were several others in nearby stone annex buildings.

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