Sometimes it’s fun to play tourist in your own town. My town is Florence, Alabama, and the other day I was waiting for a doctor’s appointment (stupid high cholesterol) and instead of eavesdropping on overhearing conversations in the waiting room — “And then the nurse told me I should have taken two tablets instead and I told her, ‘Honey, I can barely swallow one!'” — I decided to wander around the block. I’d never walked here before and I was tickled to find the Cedar Nest, http://www.cedarnest.net/, a tourist apartment I’d heard about but never really knew where it was. This one-bedroom apartment is just a block away from all the action of historic and hoppin’ downtown Florence. It’s like a bed-and-breakfast without the breakfast part, although you could walk to several downtown coffee shops and bring back breakfast to eat on the treehouse balconies. Across the street, I found this beautifully stately house surrounded by an intricate — and slightly menacing? — iron fence. This house makes me think of a graceful and gracious older aunt who remembers her days as a young belle of the ball before her fiance was killed in the war and she spent the rest of her life gently fading away. Or maybe I should stop reading so many Victorian novels. Anyway, I believe that this mansard roof means the house dates from around 1860-1885. Aren’t you impressed that I know that? Thank you, Mr. Google!