Survey

Get More Blogs

Calendar

September 2008
S	M	T	W	T	F	S
« Aug		Oct »
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30

Travel Bloggers

Ali
Katie

Nighttime in Florence, Italy

Florence at night. Remarkable. So many reasons why.

For one, the lights at night have a yellowish tint to them that permeated throughout the entire city illuminating it like an old man’s birthday cake. Candles lit up the outside tables at every restaurant and you could see excited faces as they looked upon their food, wine, or simply their company across the table just as eager.

That brings me to my second favorite nighttime noun: the people.

The Italians seem to thrive, almost surpass themselves productively, later at night. Painters were still painting, but by moonlight, their work appeared crisper, more professional, classier, and serious. The servers had smiles on their faces, customers laughed with their heads thrown back, and the superfluous tourists - perhaps exhausted from museum lines or stuffing themselves with too many bowls of rigatoni - disappear leaving the city to its true citizens and the few wannabe world travelers dedicated to witnessing the reality.

Much like the Coliseum in Rome, the Duomo in Florence is beautiful at nighttime. You don’t have to go in it to appreciate it, for this drastic change on the surface shows how gorgeous Italy really is overall. With any city, there will be patches rough enough to perhaps deter visitors to not advise going, but for Florence, it is plenty recommendable by just being there for one day and seeing the Uffizi, staying at the David Inn Hostel and walking down Via Nazionale through the town with nothing but the dim lights to guide you.