No room at the inn
Well I think Budapest is going to be packed to capacity, we’ve found it so hard to get a room there for the week we wanted, but we finally achieved it! There were about three sites giving me different rates for the same places - why oh why? Bought myself a massive suitcase yesterday, literally, if I was completely destitute I could always curl up inside it.
Incidentally, I was flying back from Florence last June, and had somehow managed to arrive at the airport just as check-in was closing, with a flight for exactly one month from that day. A really easy mistake to miss, considering that they were the same flight number, and the abbreviations are JUN and JUL. But I should have checked of course, I think that the stress of running around that airport (in the days when I spoke no Italian whatsoever) actually took a good few weeks off my life expectancy. (Got the plane in the end, incidentally. Much as I would have loved another month in Florence, I was singing in an English National Opera project three days later, and I wasn’t about to miss that!) And good God, the pensione in Florence… good location, fresci on my bedroom ceiling, TV, power shower - but the chap who ran it insisted on coming to our room to "check" at moments such as when I had just got out of the shower, when Catherine was in there on her own in bed, etc etc. And then he’d apologise - "I saw-ry, I saw-ry" - cuddle us both, say "Is a good people" and be back about 10 minutes later…
But the point is that all this leaves me a bit anxious about matters involving aeroplanes, accomodation, and me having to be organised. God knows what I’ll be like if I get some sort of music career:
"Claudio dear? Hi, s’me, ciao….. Teatro dell’opera? ….. What? Oh….. Sorry love, but I appear to be in Zurich. Ahhh….. Bummer."
