After working for a month and a half in Napoli, I finally left the magical place. I headed to Florence next, making my way up north for real.
I stayed at an artsy beautiful hostel called Archi Rossi Hostel. The place was well-decorated and the breakfast served was extremely satisfying. They served steamed rice for breakfast! With some salted pan-fried eggs and stir-fried vegetables. It felt like heaven for an Asian traveller like me who had been having Italian cornetto and pastries for breakfast every day for the past two months.
I’d recommend this hostel for a nice comfortable stay. However, it does not have a good atmosphere to meet other travelers. I ended up meeting others using Couchsurfing again.
After getting some refreshment, I went out to walk around the city. I wandered around without looking at the tourist map. Honestly, that was the best way to discover a new place. You walk around without a destination in mind, you don’t waste your time looking at the map or the street signs, you simply just stroll around and breath in the charm of the city.
I ended up in front of a majestic building. I gasped.
“W.O.W.”
It was gigantic, so enormous that I couldn’t even fit it in a picture. The sculptures on the building was very detailed. Every single part of the building seemed to be well done. It was stunning. And it left me speechless. I took out the map just to learned that it was the famous Duomo di Firenze (Florence Cathedral) and it was one of the major attractions in Tuscany. Just like I said, I was glad that I wandered without fixing a destination. If I were to tell myself ‘oh, I am going to the cathedral’ with an expectation in my head, I might not have been too impressed.
One thing that I found interesting was that many of the street signs in Florence were “vandalized”. From a 2-hours walking tour I took that morning, I learned that these vandalisms were tolerated by the local authority and viewed as art. How beautiful!
I went for a free walking tour around Florence. Honestly, I was only interested to try the local dish rather than listening to the history haha!
The tour guide recommended me a Florentine dish called ‘Lampredotto’. It was a big sandwich with cow’s stomach. I bought one from the central market and it was pretty good. However, I felt sick after I finished it. The aftertaste was rather strange.
That night, I met up with some other Couchsurfers in the area. We went to an apperitivo (where you buy a drink and enjoy the free buffet) in one of the bars nearby. There were many other locals there and they were very, very friendly. Some of them taught me some Italian, and I told them about the Malaysian culture. One of the guy didn’t know about Malaysia, and he asked me if it was China. “Che cazzo?” I raised my voice, using the Italian hand gesture (can be literally translated to ‘what a dick’, but it is usually used as ‘what the fuck did you say?’). “Oh dang, you can speak Italian now!” They all burst into laughter.
We spent the whole night drinking and playing card games. It was a great night.
I walked alongside of the river after I left the bar, just to get a nice quiet view of the city. I heard some classical music from the corner of a street and I couldn’t help but to pull my feet towards there. The wonderful sound led me to a tiny square where two young men were playing violins and a man was playing a cello in the centre, while a small quiet crowd were sitting on the patio of a building next to them, enjoying their performance. I found an empty spot on the staircase and quickly grabbed a seat. The atmosphere was peaceful, calming and angelic even. I stayed until they finished playing their last song and took a bow in front of the audiences. I went up to them. “That was incredibly beautiful,” I said, while tossing some coins into a big cello case they laid opened in front of them.
Just one day in Florence and I was already very much amused. It felt like I could always bump into a beautiful surprise whenever I made a turn – either a beautifully vandalized street sign or a man playing his guitar. Florence was like a stage for artists and musicians to shine. If artists and musicians were flowers, Florence was definitely an enchanted garden flourished by blooms.
The Dancing Wildfire 