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Notebooks, originally uploaded by Koosama.

My book publisher says to remind everyone that Twisted Travels is now available at Powerbooks and National Bookstores. Here’s a snippet of a piece that may appear in the next Twisted book, if there is one.

In Florence, I was told, everything is within walking distance. I would’ve walked from the train station to my hotel if I knew where it was. According to my online booking form it was close to the Campanile of the Duomo. I hauled my two suitcases into the number 7 bus. “Duomo? Campanile?” I asked the driver. “Si,” he said.

There was a group of noisy Pinoy teenagers on the bus, all dressed like hiphop buccaneers—shiny baggy tracksuits, bandanas, trainers. I didn’t feel like being interviewed (“Pilipino ka? Taga-saan ka? Mag-isa ka? Bakit mag-isa ka? Saan ka titira?”) so I showed no reaction when they conversed loudly in Tagalog. They looked at me pointedly, then left me alone

I don’t know how I managed it, but I missed the Duomo and then I noticed that we were in the hills. “Duomo? Campanile?” I asked the driver again. “Si,” he said. He let me off at the Duomo—in Fiesole, a hill-town outside Florence where the natives retreated in the summer.

An hour and a return trip later, I found the Hotel Medici, which was indeed within spitting distance of the Duomo if you had very powerful cheeks. A sign said the front desk was on the fifth floor. There was an ancient elevator that didn’t seem to work. I’d dragged my suitcases up a flight of stairs before I realized that the elevator did work, an alarming assortment of creaks and groans issuing from the antique machinery.

The signora at the front desk announced that I had “a room with a view”, a happy omen because it was E.M. Forster’s novel that got me interested in Florence in the first place. (And the Merchant-Ivory movie, although I know Julian Sands no longer looks like that and Daniel Day-Lewis is taken). Later I realized that every innkeeper in Florence promises a room with a view.