I think it’s natural in life to want to share our past with people we are close with. Our past shaped us to whom we are today. The thing is, it’s really easy to make new experiences with someone, it’s nearly impossible to re-create old experiences with someone new.

BOOM. That seemed super profound didn’t it? Excuse me while we celebrate all the wisdom I’m gaining in my old age.

Okay, okay, moving on…as I have discussed frequently on this blog, when I was a sophomore in college I studied abroad in Florence for three months. Those three months left a serious impact on me. Not because they were the best three months of my life (spoiler alert: my roommates and I didn’t really get along, I had boy issues and it was hard being away from my family). In fact, it’s exactly because those three months were not the best three months of my life that Florence made such an impact on me.

I was studying abroad, a dream come true, but I wasn’t taking advantage of it at all. I was speaking English, doing American things, only hanging out with the same students in my program. Honestly, it didn’t even seem like I had left my college campus and I hated it. I wanted adventure and excitement and fun! What I had was the exact opposite.

So it took some time (longer than I would care to admit), but I finally came around to the cold, hard truth: I, and only I, am responsible for my life. If I am not having fun then I need to make fun. If I am not enjoying who I am hanging out with then I need to find other friends. If I want to learn more about the culture then I need to immerse myself.

My time in Florence forced me to grow up and take control of my actions. And you know what? In the end, the good memories 110% outweigh any negative memories from those three months.

Now fast forward six years and I am bringing my now husband to this place, this city, that had such an impact on me and I just want him to experience the same thing I experienced. I want him to understand, to feel as connected to Florence as I do!

Do you know how hard that is?!?! Yes, yes you do because I’ve already told you: it’s basically impossible because even though history often rewrites itself, you can only live it once.

So in honor of his positive and good attitude, this blog post is dedicated to Andy for being a willing victim as I tried to recreate history for him. And also to you, loyal readers (all two of them) for coming down memory lane with me one more time 🙂

_________________________________________________________________________________________

1. My Old Haunt

Florence is a popular city to visit, so of course there are a TON of different places to stay (all of them ridiculously expensive for the record haha). When we were looking at the various options, I refused to stay anywhere that wasn’t in my old neighborhood – right next to Santo Spirito. I may be biased (really I am just saying that and I don’t think I’m biased at all), but I truly believe that the non-tourist side of the river is more beautiful and authentic that any other area of Florence. Real Italians actually live there, not just tourists staying in hotels. When you walk into stores people speak Italian to you and often don’t speak English. The food is dramatically cheaper (let’s be honest, the real Italians aren’t about to get ripped off on prices like the tourists are). It’s basically perfect 🙂

So we chose a tiny AirBnb that was a five minute walk from my old house. Of course, on the first day I had to take Andy to see my old house/room. We then spent some time walking around the neighborhood.

Unfortunately, my house mom, Elena, no longer lives there so I couldn’t show Andy the inside. However, I was able to get in touch with my house mom later in the trip and we walked all the way across the city to her new house to visit her.

Elena is fantastic. She was the bright spot in my entire trip. She is an elderly Italian women that speaks zero English, but makes the most amazing food and genuinely wants to help others. Even though she was retired and preferred to sleep in, she would wake up every morning before us to make us hot coffee so we could have a cup before we went to school. Seriously who is that nice?!?! Andy and I fight every morning about who is going to make the eggs and that takes all of two minutes.

Even though there was a serious language barrier, it was great having Andy meet Elena. One, so Andy could put a face to the name, but also so Elena could see that I turned out alright 🙂 It was touch and go there for a while, but I persevered. #SophomoreStruggles

Also, on the way to her house we stopped and picked up some delicious Italian treats that I’m really craving right now (for some reason, those Peanut M&Ms just aren’t the same…)

2. Getting Swoll

I’m kind of embarrassed to tell this part of our Florence adventure so I’ll try to be quick about it.

When I was studying abroad I joined a gym that was halfway between school and my host house. Italian gyms are not like American gyms. They’re TINY and they’re ridiculously expensive. I remember begging my dad to help me pay for it because I couldn’t stomach spending that much money on a gym when back at college the incredibly nice gym was part of our tuition. Don’t worry, Livio helped my poor soul out and an Italian gym girl was born!

Being that fitness is a large part of me and Andy’s life, I thought it would be a great idea to take Andy to my old gym.

And it would have been a great idea if we could have found the gym.

No, I’m really not kidding. We had the street, we had the address, we had GPS on my phone and we still couldn’t locate the building. For two days we walked up and down the street trying to find this place. We would get to the address, but there was no sign that a gym existed. If we walked to the parallel street, we could find the back door (which was locked), but we couldn’t find the front door anywhere. We even accidentally rang the doorbells of various apartments, thinking it might be the gym. They were not the gym.

Finally, just as we were about to give up for the last time, this old lady walking down the street asked us if we needed help.

I told her that we were trying to see if the palestra (gym in Italian) was open as I pointed to the door of the address online. She gives us a weird look and goes, but the gym is three doors that way, and points down the street. Apparently we were at 6A, not 6…sigh.

The sweet old lady walked us to the door and wished us luck. We could not thank her enough. Also, we still feel dumb about that to this day.

The gym had barely changed in the last six years. Everything was exactly the way I remembered it – flashing green and all.

Nothing like a good workout on your vacation 🙂

3. But the food though

To this day, I just don’t understand why food is SO MUCH better in Italy. You have an orange in America and you’re like yeah this is good. You have an orange in Italy and you’re like WHAT IS THIS GOODNESS?!?! WHERE CAN I GET MORE?!?!

I don’t do drugs, but I think it’s similar to getting a high and then becoming addicted. (But also PSA: drugs are bad for you…eating Italian food is a much better habit)

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that a huge part of our Florence experience was visiting all my favorite food places.

• Gelato: La Carrerria

Hands down, the best gelato in Florence. We only went about five times in two days.

• Lunch: Casalinga

The pasta is to die for. I’m a sucker for the pesto pasta, but Andy branched out and got bolognese which was also fantastic.

It was a bit ironic eating at Casalinga. Back in my study abroad days, going to Casalinga for lunch was a special treat. It was a bit too classy/expensive for my poor college lifestyle. (Full disclosure: It’s really not that expensive, I was just that cheap.)

• Aperitivo: Santo Spirito

If you are not familiar with the concept of aperitivo, you must become acquainted with it. It is essentially happy hour Italian style – for 7 euros you get a drink and unlimited plates of food from a buffet that changes throughout the evening.

4. City Strolls

One of the best things about Florence is the ability to wander endlessly throughout the city and be surrounded by history.

Right in the center of the city, they have an open-air sculpture garden called the Loggia. Look at this piece of art that was built in the 1860s. It’s just so intense.

Also, a trip to Florence is incomplete without a visit to David. This sculpture has a special place in my heart because IT IS LITERALLY ANDY.

It may be weird to compare your husband to a statue, but I stand by my statement. I tried to get Andy to take his shirt off in this picture so we could really see the comparison, but he wasn’t about it. Sigh.

5. Everything Else

Andy and I took some time to go to the top of the Duomo as well as visit the new Duomo musuem.

If you go to Florence, please please please make sure to do these two things. You need to make a reservation to go to the top of the Duomo so make sure to look a few weeks in advance. However, its 100% worth the advanced scheduling.

Climbing to the top of the Duomo: Climbing to the top of the Duomo is not for the weak or the claustrophobic. It is over 450 stairs with a lot of narrow stairwells. Even though Andy and I are pretty active, we were hard sweating over here. The no air conditioning probably wasn’t helping our case either.

 

The climb to the top made the views that much better 🙂

As if things are good enough with the gorgeous views from the top of the Duomo, there is also so much amazing art inside the Duomo itself.

Duomo Museum: The day after we went to the top of the Duomo, we visited the museum. The museum had been newly renovated and looked 100% different than when I visited the museum six years earlier.

IT WAS SO COOL! YOU MUST GO SEE IT!

The museum was four floors and was packed to the brim with information about the Duomo. The museum spent a lot of time discussing the architectural aspects of the Duomo. They had an amazing video on the build of the Duomos and lots of replicas you could see/touch. It’s crazy when you think that the Duomo that we know of today is was constructed over hundreds of years.

Repeat: hundreds. And we thought there was a lot of construction in Northern Virginia…

Okay, but seriously all these architects/artists/sculptors never got to see the Duomo from start to end. It’s sad to think you could spend years of your life working on something and never actually get to see it finished.

Construction on the Duomo began in 1296. However, no one could come up with a solution on how to actually build a dome so the church remained unfinished. In 1418, the group responsible for the Duomo requested architects to submit proposals on how they would build the dome. Filippo Brunelleschi was on the architects to submit a proposal. He suggested that the dome should actually be two domes – a dome within a dome.

The judges wanted to see a model of his proposed design, but Filippo refused. He didn’t want to offer up his design just for someone else to be able to use it to build the Duomo. Instead, he suggested that they have a competition – the job of building the dome should be given to the man who could make an egg stand on end, as that man would have the skills required for the job.

As the other architects tried to get an egg stand up, Filippo broke an egg in half and place it on the table…with the top part of the egg standing upright.

The judges were impressed with Filippo’s solution and awarded him the commission.

And that is how we have the modern day cupola that we all know and love!

Sadly, Filippo died in 1446 and never got to see the final touches on the Duomo (particularly the lantern), however, his model was used to build the remaining aspects.

Honestly, the museum was a treasure chest of information. It was the perfect mix for me and Andy. He loved learning how the Duomo was actually built (apparently they did have cranes back in the day…) and I loved learning about the history and the process.

Of course, what’s a museum visit without some statue-like pictures?

Even though I wasn’t able to replicate history, I’m glad I was able to show Andy at least some of Florence. Until next time…Ciao Firenze!