Fever, fatigue, travel, magic

Last night, for no reason I can pin down, I fell ill.  My best guess is food poisoning, though a mild case because it's receding already.  High fever.  Stomach cramps.  Delirious near-dreams.  No sleep.  It absolutely sucked.  I saw every hour of the night as I fought to calm my stomach and break the fever.  With the help of some aspirin, the fever did indeed break, and I began to mend.  I still couldn't eat much, but that was okay, because I had decided to hit the road.

As happenstance would have it, a couple of weeks ago, a Zagat mailing noted that Easter in Florence was an amazing experience.  I figured, hey, I'll be in Europe, I could easily go to Florence, I should keep this notion in mind.

I did.

A long cab ride, some airport time, a two-hour plane flight, and a short cab ride later, I am indeed in Firenze, one of my favorite cities in the world.

I'm staying in the same hotel where Sarah and I stayed on her age-sixteen trip six years ago, so the whole area is so full of memories of her that I have to gently move them aside to walk the halls and streets.  That's okay, though; I have the world's best daughter, and fond memories of time with her are a huge treat indeed. Similarly, I can't think of Barcelona or hear the name without thinking of my time with Scott there.  I am also blessed to have the world's best son, so how could I not have a great time with him?  I planned the trips as treats to them, but in fact those weeks were huge treats for me.  Each trip was completely different, but each gave me amazing time with my kids.  I am very lucky to have had those times--and all the other times with my children. 

Bandwidth here is not a treat, in fact it's the worst I've experienced so far, so I'm not sure I'll be able to upload many pictures; we'll see.  Plus, I want to get some serious sleep tonight--I already took a three-hour nap--to make up for last night's total lack of sleep.  

For now, here's something you don't see every day in Florence.

As always, click on an image to see a larger version.

More on it tomorrow.

Here's something you can see every day here (well, you can see most of it, the Duomo, whenever you want to).

The two are related, as I'll explain in the next entry.