firenze, italy

Firenze was my favourite Italian city! Technically it had the least tourist sights and attractions; it was mostly just art, and by our third day we had finished looking at all the main sights so we simply wandered around doing nothing much in particular. But it was one of those places I definitely would love to live in, with its slower-paced way of living, beautiful old buildings, hot weather, blue tuscan skies. It had this essential flavour to it, it was exactly how I envisioned Italy to be.


We had a beautiful little hostel tucked away in a street, among ochre and golden-yellow buildings. There was a tiring flight of stairs up - 3 stories! - but the room was nice, a double-bed downstairs with two single beds on a sort of mini-attic. I took a bed upstairs under the wooden eaves, just below a roof-window.

the gorgeous tuscan countryside!

Even the Italian countryside feels different. The heat is different from Singapore: swelteringly hot, but drier, somehow not as unbearable. The skies were bluer, the grass (literally greener on the other side); and the trees! There were cypress trees and sculpted old heavy ones. Amongst all that heat, there were still pretty flowers, slightly withering under the heat, but pretty nonetheless.



We hunted for Italian gelato and again, we were not disappointed. The streets are chock-full of gelato stores, I think we must have eaten 3 times a day! Our favourite flavours were melon, lime, and pineapple: it had huge juicy sweet chunks, very thirst-quenching and satisfying. Unlike the small scoops of gelato in Singapore, they will generously pile on huge scoops of different flavours for you, especially if you order the big cup. Of course, it comes at a heftier price tag of 6 euros for 4 flavours.


Among all its Italian counterparts, Firenze is known as the city of art. It is where numerous great works of art by artists and especially the huge sculpture of david by michelangelo is housed! We visited two museums, the Uffizi and the Galleria Academia. Street artists drew imitations of famous paintings on the sidewalks with coloured chalks and pastels. Around the city area, there were also tons of statues and sculptures. There were buskers who would dress up as statues, motionless, until you threw a euro into their tin. Voila! they would come alive, and take a photograph with you.


We also visited the Boboli gardens, this huge park/garden not too far off from the city centre. The gardens were beautiful! Unfortunately it was way TOO hot to enjoy them as much as we could have, all we wanted to do was sit in the shade and drip sweat. It didn't help that there were numerous fat cats around, lazing and sleeping off the summer heat.

Oh! and we found a bridge overlooking a river, this bridge in particular. We spent hours here throwing breadcrumbs and biscotti into it; because there were GIGANTIC catfish and fish inside. I kid you not, the bridge was so high above the water and we could see huge shadows, the fish must have been at least 2 metres long! God help anyone falling inside, those fish are like mini-crocodiles.

Everyone in Firenze dresses super well, they wear heels and elegant dresses and jackets and ride their bicycles. Cliche as it sounds, it really is exactly how you would imagine them to be. I read the Sartorialist and I can see how he gets all his fashion inspiration: residents are dressed expensively, neatly, with a slight touch of personal fancy, but always formal and modest, with classic elegant silhouettes. Even old men in suits look so cute; I saw an old lady wearing the loveliest white dress, pink flats, with a small hint of makeup, pearls and flowers in her hair. She may not have been a supermodel but she looked fantastic.

Finally, the whole Firenze city-centre has this huge elaborate church right smack in the centre, with two domes and numerous embellished walls. It became a central focal point for us, we would pass by it when travelling from our hostel to different areas of interest within the city. Whenever I saw the huge white towers in the distance, it felt like going home.