If there was one city I had been most excited to see while I was living in Italy, it was Florence. In my mind I had romanticized it in great detail and my co-workers at Bakkanali can attest to the amount of times I openly daydreamed about affogato (not avvocato - "lawyer" in Italian, or avocado, which is what they thought I was saying for the better part of a month). No, I was fantasizing about espresso over gelato and meandering through the Ufitzi. Eating florentine steak and then sitting on the steps of Piazzale Michelangelo while the sun set. Sometimes cities don't live up to the hype or to the story you build up in your mind. Florence however, exceeded my expectations in every possible way.
Contained roughly within 39 square miles, Florence is intimately small. Separating two halves of the whole is the Arno river, its origins flowing from the slopes of Monte Falterona winding through the Tuscan landscape and greeting the Ligurian Sea.
I love a city on a rivers edge, I love how this ribbon of blue has shaped a culture and its people and I cant help but time travel with it. The Arno becomes a main protagonist in the story of Florence as couples kiss along its edge, rowers grit along its current and artists flock to its bridges in hopes of capturing this cities infamous light.
My birthday came and went as a I pedaled along the path that shoulders the river, joining the flow of its the people who call this place home. There are times in in life that can dazzle you, and I have found that they are usually incredibly ordinary on paper, but I'll never forget reaching the top of Piazzale Michelangelo and watching the sun dip below the horizon feeling incredibly content in that spectacular ordinary.
Five hundred years later, the city that gave us the Renaissance is still network of artists.
Painters flock to the street during golden hour and works that span time grace us on every-day building walls. Art is ubiquitous in Florence, and it is the very heart of its identity.
Looking out over the city, the low landscape varies in height only slightly. As your eyes survey your surroundings along the street point of view you wouldn't know that the arch of the Duomo rises dramatically into the sky until you're upon it looking up, mouth open.
I arrived in Florence sometime in the evening, and as I greeted my host she lead the way up 4 flights of stairs that comically got steeper by every floor. I'm pretty sure by the final flight I was wheezing up a 50 degree angle.
After having quickly got settled I brave my decent ready to wander without rhyme or reason beyond getting a glass of wine and pizza, so I cross through the Piazza di Santa Croce as I made my way northeast. As I walked past an open air market locals chat over produce, tourists drink aperol sprtiz and I listen while voices billow out from patios. Shops with leather goods and signs that boast the best lampredotto line almost every street and I'm almost overwhelmed at how much there is to take in. After two months in Seggiano this honestly might have well been New York City.
After 20 minutes of easy walking the street opens up to a piazza where I can only say I stand jaw open taking it in. Going to Florence you know that Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore is grand. You see pictures of it and it becomes something that joins the long list of sights to see, but then you're standing in front of it truly marveling at a human expression of worship and devotion and actually see Devotion in physical form.
Images that are Authentic, Adventurous & Timeless
