Eva's first train ride

About 3 weeks ago we went to spend Sunday with our friend Luigi who lives a 1/2 hour train ride outside of Florence. It was a big day for all of us: it was Eva's first train ride (I think it's clear how much she enjoyed it), and it was our first time to get out of the city since we came back to Florence in the fall. It was also one of the first absolutely beautiful spring days that we had--warm and sunny but with a strong breeze. We all came back with sunburns!



This is Eva and Luigi. Bill and I met Luigi last year--he was sitting at a table next to us in a restaurant and we struck up a conversation that led to a friendship. He is 83 or 84 and was widowed recently, but even so has an amazing gusto for life and also for making new friends. The lunch guests on this day were a really interesting group: Bill, Eva, me, and our friend Jona who was visiting from Rome, and then 3 other people. Patricia is a Mexican artist who now lives in Florence. Luigi met her recently on a train and he invited her to come to lunch with her friend Lorenzo, a master printer with whom she works. The last person of the group was a woman named Elisa whom Luigi met at the market last year and whom he now depends on to help arrange the lunches and other things he hosts.

Along with an interest in new people, Luigi reads in English (his nephew wrote a book called "The Waltz of the Planets" which he is currently reading), is writing the biography of one of the Medici villas outside of Florence, and is among the Friends of the Uffizzi, going frequently to new exibitions and lectures at the museums in Florence. He is one of the great gifts of our time here.