When I was in my twenties I backpacked through Europe for a month, and Florence was one of the cities in which I spent a little time.
[Very little. When I was 25 I apparently had the energy of a 25-year-old, as I hit over a dozen cities in just 4 weeks, spending on average just a couple of nights in each. The thought of doing that now makes me want to take an epic nap. Never mind, I wanted to take an epic nap anyway. But I digress.]
I remembered Florence being beautiful. And bright. And fun. And very beautiful.
No details, just some vague memories. But they were enough for me to want to go again, and Juliann had read plenty about Florence to be excited to spend some time there. But really, we all had a great reason to be excited: Auntie Leslie was coming for a visit!
Leslie is the younger of my two sisters and the third family member to visit us on the road. She’s been living in Savannah, GA for the past several years while we’ve been in the Northeast, so we haven’t seen nearly as much of her as we liked. So we were over the moon when she said she would come and visit us in Italy.
Heading South: Sidetracked on the Way to Antibes, France
Braeden in particular was bouncing off the walls. We like to think that he missed Auntie’s bubbly, fun personality, and that it wasn’t solely about not spending all his time with his super boring Mom and Dad.
At least that’s what we tell ourselves.
But we would be in Florence for nearly a week before Auntie’s arrival, so when we hit town we had a single goal: relax and catch our breath.
And that we did.
During that first week we tried to see as little as possible, as we knew that Leslie would want to do a ton of sightseeing on her first trip to Europe.
Our little 2-bedroom apartment was in the Oltrarno, just over the river from all the great sights of Florence, so for the first few days we explored our neighborhood, gawked our way through Piazza del Duomo, crossed the Ponte Vecchio enough times to recognize that it’s the Times Square of Florence, and sampled a ton of gelato.
[Side note: Braeden has finally discovered chocolate ice cream, and the world will never be the same again. Oh boy.]
We also managed to find the local markets so we could get our shopping done and I discovered a CrossFit gym where I could throw some weights around.
So by the time Auntie arrived we knew the lay of the land and we hit the ground running. Literally. Florence is a great walking city, and I think we only took a bus once, to go to the dentist.
[Yup, we have errands to do, too. It ain’t all relaxing, sightseeing, and sangria on the road. Dentist appointments, working out, shopping for shampoo, finding sunblock…glamorous, baby.]
We hit some sights every day, and indulged in as much local food and gelato as we dared. We climbed the Duomo and visited the Battistero and the Duomo Museum. We checked out beautiful Santa Croce, with its all-star lineup of sepulchres, including those of Galileo, Michelangelo, and Machiavelli.
Leslie wanted to see Michelangelo’s David (the real deal, not the copy in Piazza della Signoria) so we went to Galleria dell’Accademia to check it out.
Honestly, I had walked by the copy of David in Piazza della Signoria at least 3-4 times and thought, “Ok, pretty cool”. So I was a little skeptical that seeing the real statue would be any different.
I was wrong. David in the Galleria was glorious: shining, smooth, white marble that strangely, beautifully pulsed with life. It was probably the setting inside the museum, but the statue looked enormous. The crowd wasn’t too bad, so we were able to enjoy our time with David, and we even said a sad goodbye before we left.
We had wonderfully busy second week in Florence, and we wrapped it up by wandering the city a bit until we discovered Piazzale Michelangelo high above the city. We ambled around for a while, admiring the beautiful views of the city, and then hiked back down to our neighborhood.
Juliann also surprised us by taking us one evening to the rooftop lounge at the Excelsior right on the Arno. We sipped delicious cocktails, played Uno, and watched the sun set over the river. It was a spectacular way to finish our time in Florence.
We woke on our last day in Florence, packed up, and took a taxi to a nearby car rental agency, where we picked up our ride that we would be using for the next two weeks.
Then we hit the road. Cortona, our next home, was to the Southeast, but we had one last bit of business to finish before we headed for the Tuscan countryside.
I pointed the car west, towards Pisa.
We had debated for a couple of days whether to go to Pisa at all. It added about two hours of driving time to an already busy day, and given that we figured we would spend a few hours in Pisa before driving to Cortona, we were going to be beat by the time we got settled into our digs.
We decided to go for it. From the very little we could see during our 2-3 hours in the small town, there’s not much in Pisa other than Piazza dei Miracoli – the square in which the Leaning Tower, the Basilica, and a couple of other important buildings are located – but as it turned out we wished we had more time.
Piazza dei Miracoli is surrounded by high medieval stone walls, and after parking our car and walking a couple of hundred meters we entered the towering main gate.
I will remember walking through that gate until the end of my life. One moment we were walking through an completely ordinary European city, and the next we were staring, jaws agape, at the most beautiful square I’ve ever seen. The expansive lawns were the most perfect shade of green. The Leaning Tower, the Basilica, and the Battistero were an impossible, gleaming white. Thousands of people were everywhere, but the sheer enormity of the square and the gorgeous buildings made us feel as if we had the entire place to ourselves.
We walked into the Piazza, got our bearings, and visited all of the buildings in turn, leaving the Leaning Tower for last. Each of the buildings – the Basilica, the Camposanto (a kind of inside cemetery), and the Battistero – was one-of-a-kind, breathtaking, and left us in wonder.
When we finally arrived at the Tower, we were all starstruck. I had seen pictures of it countless times and thought, like I have many times before on our travels, that it wouldn’t be a big deal.
It was. I could have sat in the shadow of the Tower and admired it for hours. I regretted that we hadn’t packed lunches so we could picnic right there. It was impossibly beautiful, leaning or not, and the fact that it was perilously, drunkenly tipped to one side made it all the more unreal. We stayed as long as we could, then left to have lunch on the streets of Pisa just outside the Piazza.
On our way back through the Piazza, we waved goodbye in a ritual we reserve for very special spots around the world, capped by Braden’s very sweet, “Goodbye, Leaning Tower!”.
I get a little choked up every time I hear him say goodbye to a landmark in his sweet voice. It’s a small but powerful reminder that it’s the last time I’m going to see many of these things with my son, which is beautiful and painful all at the same time.
We walked back to the car, energized from our encounter with yet another of the world’s icons, hopped in, and started our long drive to Cortona. Our expectations were high for our stay in the little town, and we hoped to experience an incredible two weeks at our rented farmhouse.
As we whisked along through the Italian countryside we had no idea that our expectations were about to be blown away.
Next: Tuscany!