Florence

Florence, in addition to being a lovely girl who attended my elementary school, is also, apparently, a little-known city in the little-known Tuscany region of the little-known country, Italy. Today, Florence is best remembered for being the stomping ground of the Medici family, the birthplace of the Renaissance, and a lovely girl who attended my elementary school*. I frankly hadn’t expected to be terribly impressed by Florence. Yes, Florence is historically rich and has more treasured artwork per capita than almost any city in the world, but I’ve seen old European cities before, and they were nothing to write home about. Especially if you consider “home” at this point to be the average of England, America, and Sweden – floating around somewhere in the Atlantic.


*Yes, this blog is SO popular that anyone mentioned in it gains instant fame. You’re welcome, Elizabeth, Laura, and Djibouti

However, I was forced to rescind my pre-visit scoffing, because Florence is gorgeous. The city ain’t bad either.

The first place we visited was a lovely little open air market. It was crowded, of course, and touristy, but a lot of fun. There are no cars in the town of Florence (rather like Venice), so there was a lovely, walkable quality to the city that most other cities lack. The painted plaster walls are very Florentine architecture and also, incidentally, look quite a bit like Swedish architecture in the older parts of town, such as Gamla Stan. Florence is apparently well-known for its leather products, so I bought my lovely friend Hester* a belt there, as well as a moderately tasty lunch sandwich.

*Start barricading against the paparazzi now, Hester

After lunch, we wandered over to the magnificent Duomo, a portion of which is shown above. Florence is a very small city, so it was easy for us to walk from attraction to attraction within only ten minutes or so. It was a beautiful day as well, especially when gelato was factored into the equation (which it was), and was altogether a perfect time for wandering.

Here is a picture of another portion of the Duomo.

My parents were so struck by the majesty of the Duomo that they tried to jump in the air simultaneously. Sadly, their efforts were only rewarded with some very goofy photographs. Judging by my sister and myself, goofiness appears to be a heritable trait. I suggest that the geneticists at MIT get to work identifying that gene.

After the Duomo, we wandered over to the creatively named Ponte Vecchio, or “Old Bridge”. As my more astute readers will have gathered from the name, the Ponte Vecchio is, indeed, the oldest of Florence’s six bridges. It is also rather unique in that it has shops on both side of the street on the bridge. Apparently London Bridge boasted a similar setup until it fell down, as immortalized in the beloved-yet-faintly-depressing nursery rhyme.

Here is another photograph of the Ponte Vecchio, this one taken from the bridge itself.

This is not a photograph of anything in particular, but I hope it will give you a feel for the sort of old meandering Italian architecture and street layout that gave Florence such a distinct feel.

Sadly, the time did come to say farewell to Florence. We were sorry to leave, but I think the Florentinis were fairly relieved to see the crazy jumping Americans leave. Which, incidentally, was excactly what Florence in Belmont thought when I switched schools in fifth grade.