Florence - First Impressions

I arrived mid afternoon – and after all my big talk of preferring cheap apartments to hotels, I'd gone with a great deal on a hotel by the train station (never usually a good thing) with air-conditioning and a pool ... when I realized it was 10 Euro a night more than the non-airconditioned apartment in the center of town ... and the weather forecast was calling for mid 30s ... well, it became a no brainer!

I headed out to explore – Florence is so contained that it was 5 minutes and I was in the prime shopping district and the town square and then another 5 minutes and I was at the Duomo – which really was incredible. However, my first impressions were 1. ok, this is really, really hot (mid 30s) and then, 2. wow, there are so many other lemmings ... by the end of my afternoon walk I'd come to the conclusion that while the size and containment of Florence was a definite plus, the down side was that it just meant all the lemmings were constrained in that space and so the density factor was high. That and as in Rome and Siena, being mid August, all the Florentine's had rightly escaped to the cooler countryside.

Florence held two attractions for me – first, what I thought would be the magic of the city (A Room With a View is one of my favorite movies and had highly romanticized the city) and second, it was the home of a wonderful yoga teacher from whom I'd taken a workshop in Vancouver. I was really hoping to get to one of her classes ... however, by the time I got to Siena, I realized that in all likelihood, she too would have escaped Florence for the summer. But I was determined to try ... So I got the instructions for the bus and map in hand, I headed out. All went smoothly and I found her studio in a residential neighborhood – in the same building as her home I believe – and yes, all was very quiet ... so no yoga in Florence this time.

As I was there, I explored the neighborhood a little – after the chaos of the center of town, I felt like I could breath again. It was a lovely neighborhood – little stores, restaurants and one of my top 5 churches of Italy. It was a new church – hadn't been sure those existed til now ... and beautifully designed – very light with great use of wood, brick and beautiful stained glass. It gave me faith that the Church was a part of the 21st century community.

So all in all, I was in Florence but definitely didn't have an immediate 'wow' reaction ... hopefully I'm able to find “Florence” in the next couple of days.