A love letter to... FLORENCE
It was October 2001, two weeks shy of my
21st birthday. I was headed to Florence from Providence, Rhode Island, where I was doing my bachelor’s degree in Fine Art, to spend a semester in an Italian printmaking studio. I had just a suitcase and a few Italian lessons behind me.
I had no idea where I would stay the night, let alone live for the next few months, but a cheap bed in a villa run by nuns did the trick, and I scoured expat hangouts for handmade signs advertising rooms for rent until I found a warm, quirky share-apartment near Santa Croce. When I first walked in and saw three smiling girls from Mexico, Chile and Denmark cooking in the kitchen together, I knew it was the place for me.
It rained a lot – it was autumn and November is a historically significant month for floods – but even the cold, wet days couldn’t dampen my enthusiasm about absolutely everything around me. Yes, I was there for the art and the history, but I found just about any reason to fall in love with Florence, and ultimately it was the little things that I found so exquisitely irresistible.
The reflections of palazzi in deep puddles of uneven pavement. Cappuccini made by a whitemoustachioed, bow-tied barista. Sticky-bottomed cornetti pumped with still-warm pastry cream, handed over at the back door of a bustling, unmarked bakery in the wee hours of the morning. The twinkling, curly street lights in Piazza Santa Croce at night-time as I walked home. During the Sunday market, the old couple in Piazza Santo Spirito that very slowly make necci, warm chestnut flour crêpes rolled up with sheep’s-milk ricotta and wrapped in paper. Little round glasses of red wine that warm the cheeks after getting caught in the pouring rain. Learning how to appreciate unsalted, stale Tuscan bread.
I was besotted with Florence after that beautiful, wet autumn, so a few years later I came back to experience the city in all the other seasons and found even more ways to fall in love with it all over again (and this time around, a handsome Tuscan sommelier was involved; his presence contributed to my Florentine love affair, and
I later married him inside the red tapestry-draped room of Palazzo Vecchio).
A warm, steaming panino of boiled lampredotto, abomasum tripe, dripping with salsa verde and chilli, eaten on the street as a mid-morning snack. Boiled chestnuts dipped in red wine. Fabulous elderly signore dressed in their best floor-length fur coats for an afternoon passeggiata under the city’s Christmas lights. A mission to try the ribollita, a wintry cavolo nero, bean and stale bread soup, in every trattoria. Discovering white truffles on a humble fried egg. The chill of mid-February brightened up with sweet (usually deep-fried) things dusted in sugar.
The sight of long-stemmed pointed Tuscan artichokes spilling out of their crates at the market and watching the hills around Florence come to life with spring colours. The creamiest fresh ricotta ever. Broad bean pods in a basket to peel and eat raw with pecorino while waiting on pasta. Easter holidays, feasting, fireworks. Wisteria perfuming unexpected places.
Seriously good tomatoes and Saturn peaches that make sweltering, humid summers, crowds and mosquitoes all worth it. Ripe melon layered with prosciutto as an entire meal, and alternating that with panzanella salad for months. Gelato more than once a day. Aperitivo. Long days with late-night strolls along the river and rooftop bars to cool off. Small, green, jammy Tuscan figs and wild porcini (sometimes with a few undesirable tenants in them). Succumbing to schiacciata all’uva, sweet focaccia made with wine grapes, seeds and all, at any Florentine bakery in September. Ruby-tinted new wine and then new olive oil, just pressed, sludgy and impossibly green, on toasted Tuscan bread with a pinch of salt (the best snack ever invented), signalling autumn.
I could not bear to leave and kept finding excuses to stay longer to do it all over again.
That year seems to have turned into 15 – and
I still have not tired of falling in love with
Florence every season.
I found just about any reason to fall in love with Florence, and ultimately it was the little things that I found so exquisitely irresistible.