Florence, Italy.
The birthplace of the Renaissance.
A place where times were indeed a-changin’ Bob.
A place that I thankfully didn’t judge on my first night and subsequent morning.
After the day of traveling plus the visit to Pisa mixed in, I decided to stay in on Friday night after settling down in my Airbnb, and at some point while hanging out, there was a flash of light in the window that caught my attention. A few minutes later after turning off the music to which I was listening, I noticed the familiar dull roar of a helicopter, and it didn’t seem to be straying much from its position.
I hopped on FlightRadar (a favorite website of mine now after using it to track which planes were landing in Nice on my plane-spotting day), and it made me realize that the flash of light earlier was from the police helicopter that was according to the track shown circling over the city, with its loops frequently going right over where I was.
Great.
The light shown through the window a couple more times, but with no sirens on the ground and after the helicopter finally returned to the airport, I was no longer worried.
UNTIL THERE WERE WHAT APPEARED TO BE FIGHTER JETS FLYING OVER THE CITY THE NEXT MORNING.
They were flying low, fast, and often. Where in the world have I ended up, I wondered.
As one might do in modern times, I jumped onto Twitter to see if anyone else was talking about this, and indeed they were, allowing me to find out — thankfully — that this was just the Frecce Tricolori practicing for a special flyover the next day where they would be displaying the Italian flag’s colors in the sky to honor some important author’s 100th birthday.
Finally feeling like it was safe to wander out and that I hadn’t ended up somewhere nefarious by mistake, I headed past the Duomo to a pizza place that was somewhat off the tourist drag, and while the pizza was fantastic, the drinks were even better.
I had a limoncello spritz. And then a second. As a thanks for visiting, the owner gave me a shot after my meal.
Woo boy.
I did not need that.
If you know me well, you know that one margarita at Casa Blanca in Huntsville would get the wheels turning for me, and I’m not lying when I say that one limoncello spritz did more to me than any Casa marg ever dreamed of trying.
So there I was, walking through the historic streets of Florence, Italy, grinning from ear to ear with not a care in the world.
Compared to a few hours earlier when I was convinced Italy was under attack, the times… you know the rest.
Changing things up a bit, I decided to utilize an audio tour on my phone for the first time this trip — I have turned into a huge Rick Steves fan through this, and I can’t recommend his stuff enough! — and it really made quite the difference as I wandered… or frolicked… around the Duomo, learning the history of it as I went.
The other good thing about having the tour guide in my pocket as opposed to trying to get in on a walking tour or some other such service is that when I had to expel the limoncello, I was able to pause my adventure, head back to my place for relief, and then pick it back up at my convenience.
The next morning, I had booked the earliest possible ticket for the Accademia, and it absolutely pays off to do this. As I’ve said, when they say go early or go late, it’s so true.
There I was, standing in front of one of history’s most iconic work or art, with three other people.
I was able to take all the pictures I wanted, and then I was able to take it all in. And I learned a great lesson about perspective.
When viewed from one angle, David appears to be ultra confident. When viewed from another angle, the furrowed brow gives a sense of concern, still prepared but nervous about what is to come in his battle.
All too often we restrict ourselves to only our perspective. Our perspective is truth, and we reject anyone else’s perspective as invalid when really we should be open to having our perspective challenged and seeing things in a different way.
Don’t be afraid to take a few steps around the statue to see what the other person sees.
Thanks to my Twitter search the day prior, I knew the flyover was going to occur at 10:30 on Sunday, so there I was with the windows open preparing to be ready. One thing I hear about Italy is that nothing is ever on time, but I decided to at least be in the general vicinity of the window at 10:25 when OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT. It had been just two planes the day prior, but the roar of nine military jets made me have to pee just as much as the limoncello had.
Not only was the flyover not late, it was early!
I still saw it, but my plans to get a cool video of it were rendered ruined, leaving me with just this really bad picture of the smoke.
Now that I think about it, time in Florence might actually be ahead of the rest of the world. My iPhone time has never been inaccurate. Has yours? And yet, with regularity, the church bells would ring at :58 instead of on the hour. I wish I had realized that before just now while sitting in my hotel room in Rome.
Oh well. At least there’s a picture of the smoke.
Later on Sunday, I picked up the audio tour where I had been forced to abandon it the afternoon prior, and it was a fascinating walk through Florence’s history. I took a lot of great photos, deciding again to take the camera out, but I still have yet to purchase an SD card reader for my MacBook so you will just have to pretend like you can look at them with me. At this rate, I’ll be back in Florida before I’m able to pull any of these pictures off. Hysterical.
Would I have liked more time in Florence? Yes, I think so. That being said, there are a couple positives I see from this more rapid moving between places thing I’m doing now: 1) there are a ton of places to see 2) darn, I have reasons to come back.
Slow travel is fun, if done right but can also be dreadful (my time in Nice compared to, say, my time in Annecy). Maybe if I had felt more comfortable in Annecy or if I hadn’t been in a tiny hotel room when my London time ballooned to 12 days, I would still be casually strolling around as I had originally planned, but I am quite content right now. I didn’t think I wanted to do the whole tourist thing, but that’s actually exactly what I wanted to do.
But I am also open to the possibility that I might fall in love with some place and want to stay there forever.
Spoiler alert: I’m going to keep moving down the line after this week, but don’t be surprised if you have to mail your Christmas cards to Rome at some point.
Stay tuned!
Rails to Ride 