The Rooftops of Florence

When people think of a trip to Italy, they often think of quaint small towns with beautiful homes where you can see families enjoying time on the balcony, old ladies hanging their laundry, and maybe a set of young lovers enjoying a coffee or wine under the sunset. On the traveler's circuit in Italy, while that I'm sure happens, it is not as common to see when you're trying to hit the "must-see" sites and museums. Rome, Naples, Florence, they are all bustling cities with street-side restaurants, supermarkets, traffic jams, and tourists with their cameras in front of their faces trying to take in every last detail to show their friends and families back home. While Jo and I have spent many a meal on The Great Gallivanting sitting outside at a café sipping coffee as the cities turned to life, we hadn't really had a quiet evening that we dreamed of.

Until the other night. And it was all because of a mistake.

We had forgotten to book one of our nights in either Naples or Florence. We talked about which one we wanted to spend more time in, but simply didn't finish the conversation and make the booking. So we made a last-second booking for one night at a hostel near the train station we arrived at in Florence. The hostel was small, lacked hot water, and was on the third floor with an extremely slow, somewhat sketchy elevator that made you want to take the stairs. We were tired and smelly from a day of travel, and needed to do laundry. We started our wash and had dinner at a nearby restaurant (both of us had pasta, of course), and on our way back we decided to grab a couple of drinks from the market to enjoy on some rooftop patio that the hostel claimed to have.

Well, it did have it, that's a true statement, but it was small. Very small. It had a few mis-matched chairs and stools, and it was impossible to have a private conversation, because the different groups were all up there together. It was a smoker's hangout, a place for the hostel's volunteers to unwind after a day of work, and where the laundry lines were hung.

It also had this view.

It was not even a full set of stairs away from our room. Jo and I looked out at the Italian rooftop cityscape, the towering Saint Mary of the Flower Cathedral, and the mountain backdrop underneath beautifully sunset-lit clouds, and we both said the same thing: "Wow." This was the relaxing night in Italy we had both dreamed of before starting The Great Gallivanting. It was quiet, there were balconies around where we saw the laundry hanging, city dogs watching their surroundings through the balcony grates, and the patio chairs facing each other where couples could sit an talk on a relaxing evening. Our hostel patio was enormous compared to the surrounding apartments. I had my Peroni beers, Jo had her bottle of white wine, and we were using a wooden stool as a table, but it was one of the most peaceful, relaxing evenings we'd had so far. The sunset was reflecting off the clouds over the mountains, and the only sound was the wind and our marvelling at the scene (and some guys from the hostel talking about whatever they were talking about in Italian).

And it was all because of a mistake.

Had we booked that night in advance, or simply remembered to book it at all, we wouldn't have had that scene. Our friend, who would meet us in Florence the next day, wanted us to take her to that scene when she arrived, but, alas, it would not be possible. It was a hostel, after all, and we were staying elsewhere (at an admittedly cool hostel in and of itself) when she arrived. It was an opportunity as real as it was fleeting to have just a glimpse of what people dream Italy to be, and it was just ours, if only for one evening.