🎨 “Stone and Sky: A Daydream in Florence”

#summervacay Florence doesn’t greet you—it unfolds. I stepped into the city just as morning light kissed the Duomo’s pink-and-green façade. No photo does it justice. You stand there, spine straight, like you’ve walked into a painting and forgotten the exit. Climbing Brunelleschi’s dome was worth every narrow stair. At the top, the Tuscan hills rolled into forever, and the city below looked like a warm-hued puzzle of terracotta and time. Inside the Uffizi, I met Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Crowds whispered, flashes clicked, but for a moment—it was just her, the seafoam, and silence. Lunch was a simple ribollita, thick with beans and soaked bread, in a quiet corner trattoria near Santa Croce. No menu, just the cook’s nod and the clink of cutlery on ceramic. I wandered across Ponte Vecchio, its goldsmiths’ windows glowing like relics. Sunset caught the Arno River, turning it into molten glass. From Piazzale Michelangelo, the whole city blushed under dusk—marble, roofs, and sky all breathing together. Florence doesn’t try to impress. She knows who she is—elegant, ancient, and fiercely alive.