Imagine waking up and as you open your eyes, this is what you see high above you on the ceiling...

Yes, cracks and all, this lovely frescoed ceiling was the view from my dorm bed at the convent we stayed at in Florence. The nuns were polite, but tight lipped and stern, rarely answering one in more than a single syllable word...

I wasn't going to mention my embarassing incident from this particular chapter of our trip, but aw, what the heck. The convent was enormous, with cavernous halls off of all of the 4 or 5 floors... a person could get lost in the place. Each room came with a giant keyring made out of a huge brass doorknocker complete with 2 keys on it. (If you dropped it on your toe you would become an cripple). Upon arrival at the convent, one of my companions showed me the bathroom which assumably was the shared facility on our floor - consisting of a rather large room, a nice old porcelain sink on the wall, with three narrow closed and lockable wooden doors bearing the numbers 1, 2 and 3. The middle one was always locked for some reason, but the two on either side were always open. The next morning, when visiting the great tiled room, I noticed the middle room was unlocked. I opened the door, and to my great delight found a shower room winding back into an angled secret opening. There was a towel inside, so I took a shower. I became aware of a loud pounding on the door. After hastily pulling my clothes on, I opened the door to find a woman with short hair, and a wispy white nightgown madly waving a large key about and demanding in a high-pitched British voice to know what I was doing in HER shower?? She showed me the number 2 on her key ring, and pointed sharply at the corresponding number 2 on the door. "I never dreamed there would be rooms which DIDN'T include their own shower" she sputtered at me... arms flailing and face red with indignation. With my unkempt dripping hair making me feel less than dignified, I held out my (her) damp towel and blurted out "But I used your towel"... She insisted I go talk to the Sisters to get her a new towel immediately. I fled in scarlet humiliation down the hall to my room. Grabbing my own unused towel off my bed, I returned and gave her my peace offering, and again made my rapid escape.

During the communal breakfast downstairs, I looked about nervously, hoping to avoid another run-in with the mad night gowned woman with the wild eye. I did see her there, seated at table number 2, with others from her British party eating a terribly refined breakfast, no doubt telling them all the appalling story of the peasant woman who had no bathroom of her own...

After breakfast, one of our travel companions showed me our keyring - with the number 10 emblazoned on it, and told me he had found a secret closet around the corner from our room.. with matching number on it. We went and opened the locked door, and to our amazement, found not only a beautiful tiled room with angled ceilings, but a full huge bathtub, bidet, and bathroom setup, for the personal use of room 10... much bigger and quite a bit more grand than the humble tiny water closet bathroom of the night gowned woman. Sheesh - we were checking out that morning, so it was quite disappointing and anticlimactic. Ah, the bathrooms of Florence... but that's another story.