Walking in Florence

I love Florence.

I didn’t fall in love with Florence right away. The rain and cold were formidable, and getting lost — two hours circling the hotel but never finding it — was intimidating.

But then came the day that we did everything right. We started by refusing to take the optional tour of the winery on New Year’s Day. (Our guide was very concerned. “All of Florence will be closed,” she said. “You will spend the entire day sitting in the hotel, bored. It is much better, I think, for you to come on the wine tasting with the rest of the group.”

We declined, and the magic began.

First: we slept in. Next, we wandered the streets, looking to see if, indeed, every single store would be closed. As it turned out, most retail shops were … but all restaurants, all ice cream shops, and most of the souvenir shops were open. (The retail folks, by the way, were foolish to close. From 10:00 a.m. until midnight, thousands of would-be customers roamed the streets with bulging wallets.)

We had lunch at a wonderful Chinese restaurant we found near the hotel — nine Americans ordering Thai dishes in Italian from a Chinese shop owner. We walked the nearby squares until we made sense of how they connected. We found the only leather store in Florence open on New Year’s Day and dropped several hundred dollars on shoes and coats and boots. We made a point to get ice cream three times, plus Nutella waffles, just for good measure.

I took a walk by myself and stumbled on a tabacconist’s shop with Tarot cards in the window. I picked up an out-of-print deck for a song and a beautiful Italian deck I’ve never seen before. After finding an open store selling handmade wooden toys and a public square packed with street merchants, I ran back to the hotel, collected Clyde, Joe, and Joyce, and whisked them out into the night on my own impromptu tour.

We dined on spicy spaghetti and good pizza pies in the vaulted, candle-lit basement of a local pizzaria. We sought out more gelatto. We went back to the leather store and bought leather items until they closed the doors and sent us home.

Our trip is not over, but I know that this day will be, for me, the best day of the trip: a cold, wet, rainy January 1st, spent with people I love in a city that seemed to have been created for us and us alone.