Thumbless in Miami..

Heat. Crowds. Vendors. Heat. Crowds. Vendors. HEAT! CROWDS! VENDORS! By the time the last vendor tried to sell me a watch as we were boarding the bus from Pisa, I turned into Pitbull Karen, much to the horror of Jerseyites Gail and Nancy.  I kept barking NO! NO! NO! and finally he says "You Madame are crazy!" and I reply, "Buddy, you don't know the half of it.   I've gone to the most famous attraction in all of Spain and saw only a sandcastle with a penis."OK, Christine Cherry Hommel, that's the bad part of the excursion..the heat, crowds, and VENDORS,  Now onto the "it could only happen to us" stuff. I starting taking these  notes while sitting in a plaza in front of Michelangelo's tomb.  The notes took about an hour but I had to capture fresh details. We had just been driven over two hours on an air conditioned coach bus, seeing all the natural beauty of Tuscany, where the mountains are covered in marble that looks like snow. It was as beautiful as you are imagining, and I shared the entire experience with Anita from Iowa.  Anita from Iowa is not my husband but give me a moment to collect my thoughts. First, before I tell you why I was sitting with Anita from Iowa I have to tell you I had a childhood pen-pal from Anita, Iowa, that I was matched up with via "Teen" magazine, the subscription to said magazine being a bat mitzvah gift from my cousin Cheri Peltzman Gardner. I exchanged many letters with Lori from Anita when we were 13. One of us described sexual adventures, saying things like "he put his hand down my overalls and touched my "you know what" and I lost my virginity at age twelve." The other was a geek with braces.. OK,,so now that my head is clear I can tell you why I sat next to Anita from Iowa while taking in Southern Italy. So we get a wake up call at 6:00 M, and we are ready for our Big Adventure.  Oh, by the way, if you were me, would you let a pleasant woman from the Philippines wash your underwear and shorts?  If you were me, would you have won a Royal Carribbean Pen at Motown Trivia night, getting every song but "Needle in a Haystack?" If you were me, would you listen to Dr. Kevin("there's a morgue on the ship!") tell you a story of a crew member who amputated his own thumb and had to be medi-vac'd to Miami and you thought:"I'd rather be thumbless than in Miami?" Oh readers, I'm losing my patience with you..you're not me so you can't possibly answer any of the above. I now have to tell you why Jim, who just interrupted me to say "I took a dump in Florence and couldn't figure out how to wash my hands!" was not my seat mate during that two hour scenic drive. We're up at 6:00 and meet at the theater, the designated departure place and meet Bob and Laurel, which would have been my parents' names if my Dad wasn't E. Michael("Mike"). Bob talked like John Candy or my brother in law Bill from Chicago. He's some kind of banker from Minnesota. His wive Laurel wore a pink floral shirt,  the significance of that will be evident in a sec. So we disembark and get attacked by photographers who want photos of us in from of life preservers and anchors and Jim says"We're going to lose our group!" and the photographer says "one second sir!" and I see Laurel's pink floral shirt and I say..Follow her.  This is group Two with the orange stickers.  We follow them, and we have to stand, and Jim is concerned about my back but someone says the ride is only two minutes until we get on another mode of transportation.  Ooh..you guys are gonna love this....So we get on what we thought was a bus to Tuscany.  We get off the shuttle and watch it pull away.  We then see that we are in a terminal..for sea going passengers.  Poor Bob is saying "why wasn't there a sign telling Number Two people where to go?"  Jim is dialing the emergency number of Royal Caribbean and gets someone in Miami who wants to know how his stateroom is.  Laurel in the floral shirt isn't saying a word, and the workers at the terminal don't speak any English.  Well, I'm betting that because I went to three different churches in two days, the shuttle came back, The coach bus HAD left without us but got as far as the parking lot.  Someone said "oh, there are the five latecomers but it was only Jim and me and the Minnesotans, so I'm guessing the fifth guy didn't go to church yesterday or ever. We get a few dirty looks as we get on--we were, after all, making people ten minutes late for HEAT and CROWDS and VENDORS, and one guy says "well..at least you're better off than those three passengers who went to Monte Carlo yesterday..they were NEVER found" and another guy says "I like this guide better than yesterday's because you can understand her." (Which I could not) One Australian hears Jim say he's pissed and she says"Be like Elsa and just "let it Go!" So Jim is all the way in the back with the Minnesotans, and I'm with Anita who had to do all the things Jim usually does, like show me how to use the radio. We arrive at the plaza and I see that our dinner friends have been on our bus the entire time.  I figure I had nothing to lose by saying to Dr. Kevin, "I can't stop thinking about morgues on the ship."  He politely laughs and says "What do you think happens to dead people on cruise ships?" and I answer "they're thrown overboard?"  He says yes, that happens , especially with terminal patients who sign certificates in advance. I say to Jim that if we run out of Ibuprofen and I'm still having back spasms, he'll have to get Dr. Kevin's help.  Jim reasons that Dr. Kevin is a vacationer, not the ship's doctor,  so he can't sign a  permission slip, but I meant help throwing me overboard. Kevin's wife reminds me of you,  Bonnie Santonello Satty..spitting image! We are late for dinner and Broadway Name that Tune and a Broadway show..I'll post Part Two later.