December 2, 2024

Dec 02, 2024

Had a great weekend in Florerence, but wore out my feet!  Tons of walking and massive flights of stairs.  The number of stairs to get to the next floor is double in some of these old palaces.  So for every floor, you are really going up two flights worth of stairs.  

There is so much to do and everything is really near each other, and everyone is walking, so it is just easier to walk for 20 minutes than to try to do a taxi or bus.  But by the end of the day, you've been on your feet for six hours! I had some wonderful meals but find I just can't eat as much pasta as they serve.  I wish I could say the same for the pastries!  But then I do more walking.  I find the gelato is too rich for me, which is probably a good thing.  But as it is winter, I wouldn't be eating many cold things anyway. I do find they don't serve things as hot as I would like--but I guess that's in part because I am always cold.

I still have a lot of feet pain, but I am able to get around and up the stairs and fit into the tiny bathrooms (I've never seen such creative bathroom solutions for buildings built long before there was indoor plumbing!), and this is due to the RNY.  I don't think Americans really think about how most of the world really is built for smaller people.  While I did see some larger bodies in Florence, and not all American, there really weren't that many.  Is that because larger people don't feel comfortable traveling?  I wouldn't want that.  But I also don't know how some of these places could accomodate.  Even the door to the place I'm renting is really only a half door--it is split down the middle and one side is kept bolted.  I read about a type of door called the "death door"--a second door that was built because the main door was too narrow to get the coffin out.  And if they had to build a second door for that, you know the doors are too narrow!

I guess all of this to say I am glad I made the decision to do the gastric bypass.  It has allowed my life to enlarge after continually shinking for many years.  I still have my share of aches and pains, but they are not so sever that I fear I'll never get out of the bed.  But I'm still not going to climb to the top of the dome of the Duomo!

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