Florence

Beautiful Firenze is a wonder of a city and a place that bears a visit. UNESCO has deemed the city centre a World Heritage Site and with 60% of the world's art heritage, there's an abundance to take in. 16 million tourists a year pound the city's pavements. And so: one visit is probably enough. And non-summer is a better time to go. 

Technically, I've already had my one Florence visit. Back in 2007 I traversed these streets on a hot August, travelling with Natalie and Sophie, the former, a summer camp friend and the latter my MA housemate. They're both people packed with lots of personality and I'm surprised we didn't all kill each other. We'd arrived in Florence after a hot, sweaty stay in Rome and stayed in an unremarkable hostel, unremarkable in that I have no clear memory of this place so it must have been absolutely fine. 

My 2007 self loved the city, its architecture, statues and gelato. My 2019 self still loved all these things but loathed the hordes and hordes of tourists. But you can't control when/where friends get married or the fact that teachers get a bulk of their holiday in the summer months so Gemma and I made the most of a 2-day rest stop on the way to Sweden via Munich via Italy.

Upsides: the journey from Pisa to Florence is 1 hr, 15 minutes on a cheap, air conditioned train. With regularly paying jobs, you can book a decent hotel. And so we arrived, took to wandering the backstreets and avoiding the main piazza, all the while taking in gelato recommendations from locals. For example: Procopino, an award winning local gelateria on one of the city's backstreets:

So good, we went back for more.

And as much as we wanted to complain about wading through bodies with limited spatial awareness, you can't argue with the beauty of the Duomo.

And the comparative empty of the city's other streets and piazzas:

The Ponte Vecchio, from a distance, is quite peaceful:

And when you put your mind to avoiding the crowds, this city has lots and lots of little gems. It's artistically self-deprecating:

I spent more time than I care to admit in the Piazza della Signoria getting the angle of this right:

And the city does an amazing granita:

And any city with a street-side photobooth is a city for me:

We even found a little piece of China tucked away:

And perhaps my favourite gem of a find in the city of art were these little bricked up Buchettas de Vino (direct translation--wine holes):

Historical records attest to the functionality of these waist height and lower windows throughout Florence's city centre that served as wine dispensaries in the 17th century. The upheavals in the European market forced aristocratic families to come up with better ways to make money, and so discreetly dispensing wine on the streets of the city became common practice. Some of these wine holes were also repositories for charity and rich families would leave food/wine to the needy of the city. Either way, this felt more like the 'real' Florence to me. 

So this might not be your typical 'Florence, what a beautiful city!' blog post. That's fine, I think there's enough of that out there. And, to be very honest, we didn't want to experience the typical Florence. We walked in the midday heat; we stopped into an Irish pub playing the women's World Cup Final; we stayed far, far away from tourist central. And that felt perfect to us.